Whose Side Are You On?
by Genevastar
Summary: A new threat, an old scandal ... and the members of Section D have to decide where they stand.
1. Chapter 1

Whose Side Are You On?

_This story begins a few months after 'Triumph and Disaster' ended. Original characters from the show belong to the writers who invented them, Kudos and the BBC - I'm only borrowing them. Those who emerged from my imagination belong to me._

**_Chapter One_**

"What's the problem?" Ros snapped, sliding down the window and craning out to scrutinise the line of cars crawling sluggishly like an elderly caterpillar in front of them.

"Don't know." Lucas eased over into the left-hand lane. "I'll go round it, take the back doubles."

Ros shot him a look. "Make sure you know where you're going. We're running late as it is."

Lucas opened his mouth to remind her of his photographic memory, and then thought better of it. She had been tense for over a week now, and he was acutely aware that one wrong word could destroy several days of the patient persuasion that had finally convinced her to come with him.

"We're OK," he said lightly, as she stabbed at the window button and checked her immaculately dressed hair in the mirror. "Plenty of time. Not as if we're going to be spending hours in the office." Actually, he mused, as he steered carefully through a phalanx of parked cars on both sides of a narrow street that barely left a vehicle's width between them, they didn't need go to the office at all. Agreeing to do so was another concession to Ros's mood. "And the traffic shouldn't be heavy."

Ros grunted. "Unless there's any more disruption." She peered out of the front window. "Hear that?" Lucas nodded as the steady thud of helicopter blades punched through the air. "Another demonstration somewhere. That's why the traffic's snarled up. There wasn't anything authorised, was there?"

Lucas shook his head. "Not as far as I remember. Don't think Ruth listed anything in the digest."

The reply was a disgruntled snort. "Wouldn't rely on that. She's not been making lists of much of anything for a month other than guests."

Lucas bit back a sigh. For a while, he had thought that Ros's eternally fractious relationship with Ruth was finally beginning to evolve from snarky teenage back-biting into something more befitting two highly intelligent, if competitive, adults. The resentment between them seemed – finally - to have abated somewhat. When Harry and Ruth had at last broken the news of their forthcoming marriage to the Grid at large, Ros had even managed a fleeting, if sardonic smile. Lucas, who had half-expected her to come out with a cutting comment, had breathed a sigh of relief.

_But that was then._ Since, what could have become a lasting peace had begun to resemble a temporary, fragile cessation of hostilities. As the wedding day approached, Ros, although, thank God, restricting her comments to muttered asides usually audible only to him, had, if anything, become even more caustic about it than before. Lucas had been cold-shouldered for a week after making one tentative attempt to talk to her about her attitude, so he backed off and instead set himself to working out the reason for it. He dismissed Callum's smirking suggestion of '_green-eyed monster?' _out of hand. That explanation was both too obvious and too petty to apply to a woman as complex as Ros. Anyway, Callum didn't seem to have much faith in his own explanation, for he immediately followed it up with a '_Nah, not Ros.' _Chen Liu was too much in awe of her to pass judgement, so Lucas was still mired in the swamp of his own incomprehension when Khalida murmured to him quietly one day, "I think she is afraid, Lucas."

_Afraid?_ Lucas's first instinct had been to laugh. There _were_ things Ros Myers was afraid of – needles, helicopters, losing control – but going to a wedding wasn't likely to be one. But the comment must have seeded itself into his brain, because as he observed Ros more closely, he slowly began to realise that Khalida wasn't too far off the mark.

"_Pull over!" _ His foot slipped on the clutch at Ros's barked command, and the engine whined in protest. "The sirens – are you deaf, Lucas?"

He belatedly saw the spinning sapphire lights of emergency vehicles coming up at speed behind them and hurriedly swerved to the kerb. A convoy of a police car, an ambulance and two Black Marias swept past in a banshee wail that rattled the windows. Ros glared at him.

"Save the romantic daydreaming for later, _if_ you don't mind. Step on it; we need to get to the office and find out what the hell's going on."

Lucas said nothing. He knew Ros would seize on any excuse to spend the afternoon at work rather than at the wedding, and he wasn't about to let her find one. She had already claimed that being officer-in-charge during Harry's forthcoming week-long absence made her attendance at the ceremony impossible. Lucas had countered that one with the unassailable argument that Harry would be offended and hurt beyond measure if she weren't there. So far, Ros hadn't been able to find a credible riposte, but a nice unruly little demonstration, preferably involving a few acts of hooliganism within stone-throwing distance of some sensitive government building, would play right into her hands.

"Almost there." He made a right turn, crossed the traffic stream and slid down the ramp leading to the garage under Thames House. Ros barely let him put the brakes on before she was out of the car and striding towards the lifts. Lucas just caught up with her in time and squeezed in through the closing doors.

"See, no problem," he said casually. "Plenty of time."

"_Waste _of time, you mean," Ros shot back. "Anarchy on the bloody streets, and I'm expected to spend the afternoon throwing confetti while they're out there throwing bricks." She swept out of the lift, almost trampling him in the process. Lucas sent up a brief prayer for patience and scurried in her wake.

"Come on, Ros. It's a long way from anarchy. We're not going to lose control of the nation because a handful of officers in Section D spend a few hours at a wedding. Besides, they're not a bunch of choirboys over at the Met. They'll keep an eye on the ringleaders, and deal with anyone who gets out of hand."

Ros threw a comment over her shoulder that he couldn't hear, ran her ID card through the reader and was through the pods by the time he got the outer door shut. As he followed her, he registered the startled glances among the weekend staffers. It wasn't often the section chief arrived on the Grid dressed in shot silk and pearls. Ros merely gave them an indifferent collective nod and made straight for Harry's office.

"Hi Lucas!" He turned at the greeting from Lizzie Sandell, one of Ruth's two analysts. She peered cautiously towards the office, saw that Ros had her back to them, and said eagerly: "Thought you and the boss were going to make sure Harry didn't get cold feet at the altar?"

"We are." _I hope._ He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes, and Ros Myers was going to be leaving here if he had to carry her over his shoulder caveman-style - even if that meant having to lug Harry's desk and chair as well.

"Boss is all very royal garden party today, isn't she?" Lizzie giggled with a touch of malice. "All prettied up. Well, from the neck down, obviously."

As if she had heard, Ros replaced Harry's phone, turned, fixed Lizzie with a stare that would have made a basilisk seem warm and welcoming, and beckoned Lucas to join her. He nodded acknowledgement, and glanced with sudden dislike at the young analyst. He knew Ros was the butt of a lot of mockery on the Grid. Much of it was benign, but some people could be unnecessarily spiteful, and Lizzie Sandell was one of them.

"Hope the wedding's not in church." She giggled again. "Might mistake her for a gargoyle rather than a guest."

Lucas drew himself up to every inch of his six feet three and looked down at her with disdain. "Yeah, bit weather-beaten, spouting off at the mouth … sound familiar, Lizzie?"

He heard the young woman's jeer about his being 'sweet' on Ros as he strode away, and chose to ignore it. When he entered Harry's office, Ros looked up and shook her head before he could speak.

"Don't bother. With her dress sense, I'd be far more offended if she was paying me compliments." As Lucas smiled wryly, she gestured at the phone. "The Met says the demo's about three hundred strong, outside Harvey's Bank in the Strand. The usual banker-bashing."

Lucas pulled a face. "Well I can understand anyone wanting to bash that shower after the golden handshake they gave Adrian Stillwell. They're a bunch of bloody incompetents, too. They've buggered up my direct debits more times than I can count, and when my credit card was cloned they argued the toss for weeks, even though I put an immediate stop on it. _And _ levied a shylocking 'service fee'. Wouldn't mind throwing a few rotten eggs at them myself."

"Well maybe you should skip Romeo and Juliet and play Coriolanus with the bloody mob over there instead then," Ros said tartly. She had booted up Harry's computer and was studying the screen intently.

"Look," Lucas said placatingly. " Most of these people are bloody angry, Ros, and you can't blame them. Demos are like opening a valve on a pressure cooker. Letting off steam - noisy, but harmless. Three hundred people isn't necessarily a mob, not unless it turns violent, and the police - "

"Whose bloody side are you on?" Ros snapped. "What did you think we were talking about the other day when we sat here discussing Crisis Crusade?"

"I know how you feel about them," Lucas said soothingly. "I know they're behind a lot of this. But _think_. Two years ago we had _Occupy_, a radical movement poised to overthrow the world as we know it. Now it's producing fewer tweets than a nightingale with laryngitis and could barely occupy a bench in Hyde Park. We contained _that_, Ros." He hesitated. "You're over-reacting."

Ros's eyes flashed dangerously. "You're wrong." The words were flat and dismissive, and Lucas felt his own temper rising. No-one else in the Section, with the possible exception of Harry, really shared the intensity of Ros's concern about the Crisis Crusade movement. Quite a few officers, including Lucas himself, had some sympathy for its anti-capitalist, anti-bank, anti-cuts manifesto and felt that its street protests, disruption of bank shareholders' meetings and occasional launching of buckets of paint and horse manure at selected public targets, were little more than what the world of politics and finance deserved at the moment. "Get Peter in here, will you?"

Lucas glanced at his watch. "All right. But we need to go, Ros. Five minutes." As her face tightened in irritation, he added firmly, "We can't break our word to Harry." _That should do it, _he thought as he hurried to the tech suite to find the officer who ran it when Callum was off-duty. _Nothing like a little emotional blackmail to liven up the day. _He'd pay for it later, probably with interest at a level far higher than the parsimonious skinflints at Harvey's Bank were currently offering, but for now, his main concern was to get Ros out of her bloody second home.

Peter Davies was being trained by Callum, and, through close proximity, seemed to have absorbed some of his joking flippancy. Fortunately, he had a little more sensitivity than his mentor, and one look at Ros's impatient expression brought forth a swift response to her rapped questions. Yes, he was in close liaison with the Met, no, he hadn't yet matched any of the faces they had logged as being street generals for Crisis Crusade, no, so far the demo was heated but under control. When Ros ran out of queries, Lucas leapt in.

"Thanks, Pete. See you Monday, then." He felt, rather than saw, her glare boring into him. "We'll be off now."

"Right." The young man beamed. "Give my best to the happy couple! Be a bit different around here when they get back. Sir Harry and Lady Ruth running the Grid together? Sounds like something out of Downton Abbey. I can just imagine them discussing office politics over breakfast. Mind, could be useful when Harry does his stubborn mule act, we can sneak in via the back channel and ask Ruth to use her influence on the QT, can't - "

_Hell. _Peter Davies was a promising officer with good prospects within the Service, but they were shrinking with every word he spoke. He clearly hadn't yet learned to read the quality of Ros Myers's silence; this one, Lucas knew from experience, spelt 'D.A.N.G.E.R.' He inclined his head very slightly towards the open door and mouthed '_now_'. Peter stopped dead, blanched, and then disappeared at speed, leaving a mumbled apology hanging in the air behind him. Lucas turned to Ros. Her face was impassive, but before she looked away from him, he caught the expression in her eyes. Instead of anger, or the resentment he might have expected, he glimpsed plain, straightforward unhappiness, and yes, the fear that Khalida had mentioned. He put his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Ros, he's - "

"Right, I expect." She moved towards the door. "Come on." She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him, but he could see it was an effort. In the depths of his brain he heard a distant clang, the familiar sound of Ros Myers pulling the shutters down. "Crisis Crusade can wait until Monday. Let's go. Get me to the church on time."

Lucas negotiated the way out of the city in silence; Ros glanced out of the window a few times in response to the sound of sirens, but she said nothing, and when Lucas suggested putting some music on, merely shook her head. Reluctantly, Lucas let her be and concentrated on driving. Even at her most upbeat, Ros wasn't the world's foremost exponent of light conversation, and this was Myers Silence version 2 (hurt and withdrawn). When the JIC had refused to act on Harry's recommendation that she be appointed to his job after his retirement, her response – at least in public – had been a derisive '_their loss, not mine_'. Harry had shown far more overt annoyance, and had made his point by delegating more authority and responsibility to her ever since, sending her to JIC meetings in his stead, and naming her Officer-in-Charge while he was away on his honeymoon. Her position as his number two was undisputed. But the wedding, Lucas thought, changed everything. In his cheerful innocence, Peter Davies had put his finger right on the fear that Khalida had sensed in Ros – that Ruth, by virtue of the time she would now be spending with Harry, might use her privileged position to by-pass official procedures, influence his decisions, and, in the process, undermine both Ros's status and her authority. Lucas knew she would never admit to any apprehension, which made it impossible to discuss the issue. So there it sat, he thought in exasperation, like the proverbial elephant while he and Ros tiptoed around it like two mice pretending the bloody room was empty.

Once they were threading their way through the patchwork of golf courses dotted among the wooded hills of Surrey, he switched on the eleven o' clock news broadcast. For the first time, Ros stirred, and listened attentively. The demonstration at Harvey's Bank was mentioned, but briefly, and there was no breathless, over-excited stringer reporting from the scene. That, as both of them knew, meant that it was unlikely that there had been any major disorder. Ros's mobile had been as silent as she herself had, which confirmed it. Lucas swung the car into a sharp turn eastwards to pick up the road to Shere.

"There you go, boss. All quiet on the western front, and we'll be in time to see Harry get hitched." To his relief, Ros responded.

"Do we know how many people are actually coming?"

"The team, couple of old army friends, I think. His kids. Ruth's mother, obviously, and Malcolm. Not sure who else." Lucas grinned. "Enough to form a defensive cordon if he thinks of making a dash for freedom at the last minute."

Ros's lips curved in the briefest of smiles. "He won't do that. His regimental motto was _Nec Aspera Terrent._" As Lucas raised his eyebrows she gave him a withering look. "Not afraid of hardship."

Lucas stuck his tongue out at her and expertly slid the car into a parking place between a large tractor and a Citroen _deux-chevaux._

"Got a motto for Ruth?" he asked as they got out of the car and looked around.

Ros pointed towards the church steeple about a quarter of a mile away. After a moment, she offered, "_Amore sitis uniti;'? _and glanced sardonically up at him. " 'Be united in love'. Ignoramus."

"That's nice," Lucas said, surprised. "Oxford University?" He saw a fleeting twinkle of mischief in Ros's eyes.

"Not exactly. The Worshipful Company of Tin Plate Workers."

Lucas laughed, more out of relief that she finally seemed to be relaxing … very slightly. "Beautiful place," he observed, as they turned onto the village green and saw the church nestled among trees on the far side.

"Yeah, Ruth's mother lives in Guildford. It's part of the diocese; that's how they managed to get it." Ros's voice took on a sarcastic note as she pushed open the wooden lych-gate. "Ye Olde Middle England." She shot him a challenging look. "Just the kind of place your revolutionary pals in Crisis Crusade would like to turn over to 'The People'."

He was saved from replying when a voice shouted: "Lucas!" and they both saw Chen Liu waving energetically with both arms from among the tilted gravestones. Ros snorted.

"Didn't someone tell him we're under the Heathrow flight path? Anyone on final approach sees him, and Ruth'll be chased up the aisle by a sodding Dreamliner."

Lucas choked back his laughter as the young Chinese joined them at the porch. "We thought you'd got held up." He looked admiringly at Ros. "Wow, you're so - "

"So - ?" Ros enquired ironically.

Chen's hand flapped in the air as if he was physically trying to pluck the word he needed out of it. "So … _different_ from at work. I mean, now you actually look beautiful." It took a fraction of a second for him to hear his own words. "Not – that is, I'm not saying you don't – I mean aren't - "

"Chen. No need to dig your own grave, mate." Callum strolled out of the church. "Plenty going spare around here if you've got a death wish. You coming in, boss? Think Harry could do with a bit of last-minute moral support." He gave Ros an exaggerated bow and offered her his arm. Lucas flinched in anticipation. To his amazement, Ros contented herself with a penetrating stare, then took it, and accompanied Callum into the building. Lucas turned to a crestfallen Chen and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry. We've all done worse and lived." He nudged him towards the doors and winked. "Just. Khalida here?"

His question was answered as they entered the church; he spotted her instantly, dressed in a beautiful red, gold trimmed _salwar kameez_, a matching headscarf draped in elegant ripples around her throat. Ros – predictably – was talking to Harry at the front. Lucas stopped briefly to compliment Khalida, whose golden skin took on a flush only a few shades lighter, on her outfit, and said hello to two elderly women sitting in the front left-hand pew, one of whom was obviously Ruth Evershed's mother, before joining them.

"Harry." He glanced at a group of three older men, none of whom he recognised. Along from them sat Harry's longstanding counterpart in MI-6, Sir Gareth York, whom he certainly _did._ Directly behind Harry sat a young strawberry-blonde in her thirties, and next to her was a man of roughly the same age. He looked uncomfortable in his suit, and was fidgeting nervously. The girl looked up at Lucas and gave him a smile that he returned. _Harry's kids._ It was an easy guess; he knew Graham's story from Ros. Sitting along from them was a man a few years older than himself, next to a tall, striking blonde. She was unfamiliar, but the man rang a distant bell in Lucas's memory. He frowned, and tried to dredge up further details, but for once that reliable instrument refused to provide a name to match the face. He shook off the slight feeling of unease and turned to Harry. "Ready to tie the knot?"

Harry pursed his lips, fiddled with his tie as if he thought Lucas was referring to _that_ knot, then set his shoulders and mumbled something that Lucas took to be a yes, just as the vicar's voice announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats!"

Lucas glanced down the church and saw two silhouettes haloed by the sun streaming in from outside. He was about to slide into the pew, when Ros moved to the empty rows behind Mrs Evershed and her companion and indicated with her head to the other officers that they should join her.

_Typical Ros, _Lucas thought, as the organ quietly started to play 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'. She hadn't wanted to attend this wedding, she was afraid of its consequences, and she had never been what you'd term a bosom pal of Ruth Evershed, yet she was the one to notice how embarrassingly few people were on Ruth's side of the church and do what was needed to redress the imbalance. He turned round to see a beaming Malcolm Wynne-Jones leading Ruth towards them, and winked at him. Malcolm had been earmarked for the job of being Harry's best man until Ruth _insisted _on having him give her away. Neither would yield an inch, so Malcolm – ever the peacemaker – had ended up doing both jobs.

As everyone rose to their feet, Lucas heard what sounded like a muffled burping noise from somewhere near his knee, and turned to see Ros sliding her mobile from her handbag on the pew. She met his glare with one of her own and checked the screen. Her lips tightened, but she merely flipped the cover shut and kept it in her hand as the small congregation shuffled and creaked its way back to a sitting position. The vicar, a neat, well-kept little man who matched his church so well that they could have been lifted together straight out of an episode of _Miss Marple, _took his place in front of Harry and Ruth and beamed at his congregation. Lucas squinted sideways at Ros. Her face was expressionless, and although she couldn't have failed to sense his eyes on her, she gave absolutely no reaction.

For a split second, Harry looked over his shoulder – _looking for her_, Lucas thought. As if in confirmation, Ros moved her head so imperceptibly that it could barely have been called a nod, and Harry, apparently satisfied – _by what, her approval? confirmation of some agreed decision? _- turned back.

The vicar cleared his throat. No happy-clappy 'worship songs' or Humanist wedding nonsense here. This was the good old-fashioned, much-derided, traditional ceremony.

_Dearly beloved …_

_oOoOoOoOo_

"So that's her? The legendary Rosalind Myers?"

Lucas looked across the terrace of the local pub where Harry and Ruth had organised a simple buffet lunch.

"Yeah. But I wouldn't call her that to her face." Ros had been talking to Malcolm, but he and Callum were now sitting together, heads down, scribbling on a napkin. Lucas would have bet they weren't playing noughts and crosses. He frowned. "Did you know her before?"

Tom Quinn, whose name Lucas had remembered during the service, shook his head. "No, she was still in Six when I was Section Chief. But you hear her name … in the business. She has quite a reputation."

Lucas still wasn't quite sure what 'the business' was; he remembered Harry saying Tom had taken early retirement, but the man himself, though friendly, and obviously very fond of both Ruth and Harry, gave little away. '_Quite a reputation_' could mean anything. He saw Ruth pulling Harry by the hand to join Ros, who turned from gazing out over the countryside and smiled in welcome. Lucas wondered whether only he could see her unease. He had to admit that she had put on a good show. She had made an effort to chat with Harry's son and daughter, let Mrs Evershed chat – at some length – to her, and scrupulously avoided gravitating towards either Harry or Sir Gareth York, whom he knew would have been her conversational partners of choice. Yet even when Ros was trying her hardest to socialise, there was a remoteness about her that seemed to discourage others from approaching; Quinn was obviously intrigued by her, but he too made no attempt to go and introduce himself. Perhaps like Lucas, he could sense her discomfort.

"It's well deserved," he said now, even as he told himself he should stop getting so defensive on her behalf; she wouldn't thank him for it. "I've never worked with a better officer." He watched Ros embracing Ruth.

Tom smiled. "See Ruth's as popular as ever."

Lucas coughed as some of his champagne went up his nose rather than down his throat. Whatever 'business' Tom Quinn was in, he hoped it didn't involve much in the way of assessing human relationships. Khalida had joined the other two women now, plying Ruth with questions about her forthcoming honeymoon, by the looks of it. Lucas saw Harry waving at him, and hastily excused himself to Tom.

"You've got a good woman there, Harry. Take care of her."

"Ditto," Harry said pointedly. "We're leaving in an hour. I'm relying on you – _both_ of you. No nonsense from Whitehall – if she needs back-up, Lucas, you make sure she gets it. Clear?"

"Crystal," Lucas answered.

"And if there's trouble, you call me."

"Absolutely," Lucas confirmed, although neither he nor Ros had any intention of doing so – he because Harry deserved his peace, and Ros because she was determined to use this week to prove herself to the JIC. He shook Harry's hand and watched him guide his wife over to the group of men Lucas assumed to be his old army chums. In his pocket he heard the muted chime of his mobile and pulled it out.

_May we go now, please? _

He looked up. Ros, alone again, was sitting on the terrace wall, toying with an empty glass. Her posture was as elegant as ever, her appearance as immaculate, but there was a weariness about her now that she had done what she had to do. He weaved round a waitress with a tray of glasses and joined her.

"Enough wedded bliss?"

She got up. "And Podgy." She smiled wearily at his puzzlement. "I'll translate on the way home. Shall we?"

It took a few more moments to offer farewells, but they were almost at the road when a quiet voice said behind them, "Excuse me." A tall man of about Harry's age, ramrod-straight as only a former military officer can be, with a strong face and sharp grey eyes, enquired, "Are you Rosalind Myers?"

Lucas felt Ros's body stiffen to what he thought of as operational alert mode, but she merely said "yes," and waited.

"My name is Jeremy Phelps. I served with Harry in Northern Ireland – was his commanding officer, as it happens." When Ros nodded without comment, he glanced at Lucas. "I'm retired from the army, invalided out, actually. I'm a prison governor now. Wormwood Scrubs."

Lucas heard the hiss of Ros's sharply indrawn breath, but under the influence of wedding bells and several glasses of champagne, he didn't immediately grasp the significance of the words.

"I wonder, Miss Myers, if I might speak to you alone? I have some news I think you need to hear."

oOoOoOoOo

_Thank you for reading! If you have the time, please review. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

It was the heel of Ros's hand on the horn that startled Lucas out of the sleep he'd slid into halfway up the A3. Her lip curled as he banged his head on the roof and swore.

"Sorry if the company was so dull," she said dryly.

Lucas mumbled a denial that was unlikely to sound convincing, since apart from a curt, unadorned '_no_' in response to his query as to whether she was going to share with him what Jeremy Phelps had told her, Ros hadn't uttered a word since they left Shere.

"Do you fancy a coffee?" she asked abruptly. Without waiting for a reply, she got out of the car. Only then realising that they were at her flat rather than his, Lucas did likewise, stretched his cramped limbs and loped down the street after her.

"Make yourself at home," Ros said off-handedly. Lucas yawned, looked around and felt the yawn end in a sigh. _Some chance._ He had learnt tidiness when the price of failing to display it in his Russian prison cell was three days on short rations. Even so, the rigorous neatness of Ros's flat often left him acutely uncomfortable; he could never really relax on a sofa where the cushions were so precisely geometrically arranged that he could swear she had used a tape measure and spirit level to place them.

"Coffee's on. Back in a sec." Ros disappeared into her bedroom. Lucas unfastened the windows and walked out onto the balcony. He often wondered how Ros had managed to afford a flat like this with its view over the river, and assumed her father had chipped in. _Her father._ Sir Jocelyn Myers, former ambassador to Russia, former board member of Gas Stream, current guest of Her Majesty in H.M.P Wormwood Scrubs.

"God, that's better." He turned and blinked in surprise as Ros came back in. She had pulled her hair loose from its French plait, tucked it behind her ears, and changed into jeans and a green polo shirt. She gave him a quick, almost mischievous smile. " Would you be standing there like a Hugo Boss advert if you were in your _own_ home, Lucas?"

With a relieved grin, he removed his jacket, wriggled his tie knot undone, and released his throat from the constriction of his collar. He pulled his shirt from his trousers and was just rolling up his sleeves when Ros brought out two mugs of coffee.

"Thanks." He lowered himself onto the wicker sofa against one wall. She leaned against the balcony rails, brushing her bare toes to and fro on the rush matting that covered the floor. Lucas took a sip of his coffee, gauging her mood. Trying to read Ros's face was like trying to get through War and Peace with the knowledge culled from a few pages of a Russian phrase book.

"Who's Podgy?" he asked at last.

Ros gave a faint smile and told him. Lucas burst out laughing.

"Hope to God he never says that anywhere Harry can hear it." He chuckled to himself. "Podgy and Bliss. We could use that as a codename if Harry and Ruth were ever to go undercover."

Ros's eyes flicked up from contemplating her coffee just long enough for him to realise that by suggesting – even in jest – that they might, he had inadvertently rubbed a large handful of salt into her already open wound. He took another hurried swallow at his coffee just as she did the same – _for the same reason, buying time _– and frantically searched his mind for some safely neutral topic of conversation. When Ros broke the quivering silence first he was so taken aback that he almost spat his coffee all over the pristine beige sofa cushions.

"I hope they like the hotel," she murmured. When he shook his head uncomprehendingly, she added, "In Paris. I told Harry about a hotel I know. The _Francois 1er. _Small and romantic_, _just off the Champs Elysees. Kind of thing I thought would be to Ruth's taste."

_Small and romantic? _Yes, absolutely perfect … for _Ruth._ He met her eyes. Ros drained her coffee, put her empty mug on the table and answered his unasked question. "I had a … relationship for a while - long time ago. Doctor – someone I knew from university. He took me there once."

"Oh, right." Lucas made the comment sound as casual as he could. Ros sometimes sprinkled tiny droplets of personal information like that into conversation; it was so much in contrast with her usual reticence, and happened so rarely that it always caught him completely off the bat. _I'll never understand this bloody woman. She doesn't even __like__ Ruth. Give me the Sphinx any day. _"Long as he doesn't take a day trip out to Levallois for a little _tete a tete _with the DCRI."

Ros gave a twisted smile. "I think Harry's honeymoon with _them _ended a long way back." She stared out at the river for a long moment, then said quietly: "Phelps told me my father's going to become eligible for parole." When he stared at her, shocked by the abrupt suddenness of the statement, she went on: "It's been seven years, Lucas. Third of his sentence."

"When?" Lucas stuttered.

Ros sat down on the matting, her back against the railings. When Lucas patted the seat next to him, she shook her head. "His case is due to come up for review in three weeks." He watched her fingers tease two loose strands from the matting and begin twisting them into a plait.

"How do you feel about that?" he asked at last.

Ros made a sound that was half sardonic laugh, half derisive raspberry. "How do I feel about it? I've had a skeleton locked in my cupboards for the last seven years. Now it's about to burst out in a rattle of bones and do its own personal _Danse Macabre_ all over the Grid. Perfect bloody timing. How do you _think_ I feel about it?"

Lucas had meant, how did she feel about it_ personally_. It was so utterly typical of Ros, he reflected, to view the matter essentially in terms of how it would affect her professionally. Cautiously he changed tack a couple of points.

"Did he say whether Harry knows?" _Surely he must have done. _Together,Jeremy Phelps and Harry had formed the sole conduit through which Ros had received news of her father.

"Yes." Ros twined the plaited rushes round her finger. "He told Phelps I would know what the right decision was, and he was confident that I'd take it."

Lucas frowned. "How do you mean? What decision?"

Ros drew her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Well, normally we wouldn't be involved, but because of the nature of his … offence … the Service will be asked for its opinion. But there's more than that."

_Isn't 'that' enough?_ Lucas thought, aghast. News of Myers's release could prompt retrospectives on _Panorama_, his picture would be plastered all over the tabloids – and that was without the Lizzie Sandells spreading gossip and rumours through the Thames House sour-grapevine. All of it as Ros was trying to demonstrate her loyalty, ability and reliability to the Home Office and the JIC. Conscious of her watching him, he made an effort to keep the apprehension out of his voice.

"More?"

"Yes. He's made a request to speak to someone from the Service. According to the Governor he has information he says we need to know - about the 'current situation'.

Lucas's immediate thought was that Sir Jocelyn was waving a tempting tidbit under the noses of the authorities in order to score a few Brownie points ahead of his parole hearing. He couldn't imagine that in the seven years of his imprisonment the man could have gleaned any information to which MI-5 didn't already have access.

"And he can't just give it to the Governor?"

Ros shrugged. "I don't know about 'can't'. But he won't, apparently."

Once, as a little boy, Lucas had disobeyed his father and ventured out onto the ice of one of the Cumbrian lakes during a winter freeze. Inevitably, it had begun to creak, and then crack, under his weight. He could still remember his terror as he made his way, step by cautious step, back to the shore, safety, and a thorough spanking with his father's favourite carpet slipper. One false move would have meant disaster_._ He had the exact same feeling now.

"And do you think he's - "

"Telling the truth?" To his relief, Ros finished the sentence for him. "Or just playing cat and mouse with us?" She shrugged again. "My father understands the value of information, Lucas. He always has. He knows it for what it is – currency. Something to be traded, something you can make a profit from. So I don't know. There's only one way to find out."

_And Harry's sailed off to Paris and left you to deal with this? With all the emotional 'Daddy' baggage you're carrying with you? _Lucas cleared his throat and went for a neutral question.

"And by 'current situation' he means what – the anti-austerity demos and the bank protests?"

"I imagine so," Ros said dryly. "Unless he's tossing in the tree-huggers in Epping Forest and the Cats Protection League as well."

Lucas toyed with his empty mug. "But Ros … he's been behind bars for seven years. Hasn't he been kept isolated from the other prisoners for a lot of that time?" When she nodded, he asked: "Well then, what information could he possibly know? Where could he have obtained it from?"

"He's had visitors," Ros pointed out. "Friends, colleagues, family. Well - " a slight flush came and went, "the _rest_ of his family. The media, and access to the Net – the prison bush telegraph. I wouldn't put it past him, Lucas, to know what we don't."

Lucas shook his head dubiously. Ros wouldn't like what he was about to say, but he had to say it. "I don't see how he _could_ do. Isn't it far more likely he's just trying to gain an advantage before his hearing?"

Now Ros shook her head, but with far more decisiveness than he had done. "You don't know him, Lucas." She got up and joined him on the sofa, perching tautly on the edge, making fierce chopping gestures at the air as she spoke. "Look, we need to know who's behind all the unrest. Who's organising it, who the planners are. It isn't enough just to lump them all in a basket and label it 'Crisis Crusade'. We won't get a grip on this by chasing ghosts. There's a puppet-master behind them somewhere, an individual manipulating these people. If he knows … "

This, Lucas thought, was where his point of view and Ros's diverged beyond the point where they could be reconciled. She was adamant that Crisis Crusade had organised ambitions that went far beyond spontaneous, sporadic protest. Lucas, although he would never have dared to put his feelings into exactly those words, couldn't shake his suspicion that she was succumbing to what he had heard cynically described by some old-timers within the Service as 'plotters paranoia'. Sometimes, there just _wasn't_ an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda. Sometimes, things just were exactly what they seemed to be on the surface. To him, Crisis Crusade was little more than a catchy label being attached to disparate groups of very angry, very resentful and sometimes very frightened people, not a cabal of conspirators trying to overthrow the state. Ros emphatically disagreed with him. He looked up at her. _And now -_

"She's trying to make the facts fit her pet theory in order to get back the honourable, patriotic, Establishment Daddy she lost." Ros got up abruptly and walked back to the balcony rail, but this time she turned her back on him. "Go on, you might as well say it. I know that's what you think."

Lucas swallowed hard. She had so exactly expressed his thoughts that he had no idea what to say. But there had been the slightest break in her voice in that last sentence. He got to his feet and went to join her. He put a hand gently on her arm, but Ros jerked sharply away from him.

"Well, I'm not. I know you don't agree with me about Crisis Crusade, Lucas." She shot him a quick sideways glance; her eyes were over-bright, but she was still in control of herself. " That's fine. God knows, I don't _want_ to be right. I'll call a conference in the morning; it's overdue. We'll brief the rest of the team, see what the others say. As to - " she stopped, raked a hand through her hair, and began again. "As to my father … Harry trusts my judgement." She didn't say it, but Lucas heard the postscript '_even if you don't _'. " He knows I can be impartial and logical." She looked him straight in the eyes. "I will be."

"I know that," Lucas said quickly. "I didn't mean - "

Ros held up a hand. "Don't. Please." She span on her heel. "I'll make some more coffee."

Lucas watched her disappear into the flat. _Shit. _He couldn't work out whether Harry's swanning off to Paris and leaving Ros to deal with this alone was an act of damn-nigh criminal negligence or a demonstration of the extraordinary level of his trust in her. _The latter._ If Harry hadn't believed that Section D's share of responsibility for the security of the nation was safe in her hands, then Ruth would have been spending her honeymoon in a small and very _un_romantic office overlooking the Thames - and marital harmony be damned. _He_ was the one with doubts, not Harry. Yes, Ros had sacrificed her father and her relationship with the rest of her family seven years ago for the sake of preventing a coup from ripping apart the social fabric of the country; the logical assumption was that she'd do the same thing again if placed on the horns of the same dilemma. But Lucas couldn't quite forget those seven years of unanswered letters; that conversation they'd had in this same flat about her rejection as Harry's replacement. _He's my father, whatever he's done … his intentions were good. He loves his country …' _

He jumped as Ros came back and sat down. She handed him a refilled mug. "I saw you talking to Tom Quinn. What did you think of him?"

_OK, if you want to change the subject. _"You know him then?"

Ros shook her head. "Adam told me a lot about him. I know him by name and by reputation."

He couldn't help smiling. "That's almost word for word what he said about you. He was Section Chief when I joined Section D. Originally, I mean. Nice guy. Bit po-faced until you get to know him, but he could be great fun. Talks about Harry and Ruth as if they were his favourite aunt and uncle. Even asked about Fidget."

Ros rolled her eyes. "You should have sent him to me. Mrs Evershed must have told me the bloody animal's entire life-story - complete with numbers of kittens fathered, eating preferences and salacious details of his regular nights on the tiles." Lucas chuckled. "She's looking after him while his Auntie Ruth's away. She must keep him under closer surveillance than we do suspects on the Watchlist." She yawned. "God, I'm tired."

_Not surprising. _Lucas put his arm round her shoulder and eased her towards him. "Relax, have forty winks." For most of the guests, the wedding would have been a pleasant and relaxing occasion; for Ros, the whole thing had been a cause of anxiety and stress, even before this business with her father hit like an emotional mugging. As she leaned back into the cushions and closed her eyes, he eased his mobile out of his pocket with his right hand and checked his messages and the news feed. The BBC had pushed the demonstration outside Harvey's Bank up its running order; there had been some violence that, according to the report, had been triggered by the unwise decision by the bank's chief executive to leave the emergency board meeting he had been chairing to come and meet the demonstrators. He had suffered nothing worse than a few bruises and the indignity of his Saville Row suit being introduced to a bucket of pig swill, but there had been scuffles with the police and a few arrests made. Lucas made a mental note to look into events more closely the following day and discreetly slid the phone back into his pocket.

"Lucas." The murmur startled him; he thought Ros had dropped off, but when he looked down, her eyes were open and scrutinising his face.

"That's not more than twenty-five - at most," he said reprovingly. When her eyebrows knitted together, he said severely, "Winks."

His wit went unnoticed. "I'm going to need your help."

"You've already got it," he said. "You know that. We'll manage, Ros. God, it's only a week."

"No. That wasn't what I meant." She sat up, ignoring his hiss of disapproval. "No, for something … specific, I mean." She paused. "And difficult."

"Involving?" Lucas asked, his curiosity roused now by her uncharacteristic hesitancy.

"My father. He's been told that Harry isn't available, and that if he'll have to talk to his deputy. But he doesn't know - yet – who it is." She lowered her eyes. "He's refused to acknowledge my existence for seven years. I'm not sure he'll agree to see me now. He'd see it as a climb-down; loss of face. And even … even if he did agree, he'd probably refuse to tell me whatever it is he claims we should know."

Lucas felt his stomach clench as the reason for her hesitation began to dawn on him. A couple of months previously he and Khalida had gone to interview a terror suspect at Belmarsh Prison. Lucas had been nervous, yet hopeful that after the additional therapy sessions following his panic during the decontamination procedures, he had finally exorcised the haunting ghosts of his Russian imprisonment. But after an agonizing hour surrounded by the sense, sounds and smells of confinement, he had been forced to invent a reason for leaving the building. He and Ros hadn't discussed the incident, but he knew that Khalida, who had concluded the interview alone, would have had no choice but to report it to her.

"And you want me to come with you?" He saw what most people would never have noticed, the tiny twitch of her lips at the hollow tone of his voice, and the unwillingness it conveyed.

She shrugged. "I know it's a lot to ask." She sounded weary, and suddenly Lucas felt guilty. He went for compromise, trying to forget the quotation about it being a good umbrella but a poor roof.

"Do you think we could let it stand until Harry comes back?"

The instant change in her attitude told him that he'd made a bad mistake. "No." Suddenly she was visibly bristling. "I'm supposed to be in _charge_, Lucas! This is national security we're talking about, not a bloody visit to the dentist - make an appointment for ten days time and in the meantime take two paracetamol every four hours and avoid crunchy food! And if he's manipulating us - "

"Harry?" Lucas said, idiotically.

Ros threw her hands up in exasperation. "My _father_, Lucas! God." She got to her feet. "That's my phone."

Lucas groaned inwardly as she strode into the flat. His shirt was clinging damply to his spine, and his pulse-rate had jumped at the mere idea of finding himself, even temporarily, on the wrong side of the impenetrable walls of Wormwood Scrubs. Ros had the authority to _make_ him accompany her, but he sensed she wouldn't. _I need your help._ That had been a plea, not an order, which made it all the more difficult to refuse. He muttered a Russian oath to himself. _Damn Sir Jocelyn bloody Myers._

He looked up as she returned to the balcony. He had half-expected her to be cracking orders to someone; instead, she was looking at the screen with a faint smile tinged with something you rarely saw on Ros Myers's face – wistfulness.

"What is it?" he asked.

Ros handed over the phone. Lucas read the two messages, one from Harry accompanied by a red-faced smiley with steam coming out of its ears and reading '_tell the techie there's a vacancy in HR _', and a second – _'it's beautiful, thank you. I'm so happy _' - from Ruth's number. Lucas chuckled.

"What did Callum do?" he asked.

" Talked to a mate in the airline and had them presented with flowers, champagne and truffles in the lounge." Ros snorted. "Harry doesn't know how lucky he is; I did talk him out of having them play '_Congratulations_' on the muzak tape as well."

Lucas handed her back the phone. Ros muttered scathingly about Mills and Boon as she re-read Ruth's message, but he wasn't deceived; traces of that wistful expression still lingered in the depths of her eyes.

"How about a glass of wine?" he asked. "Don't see why they should have all the fun." When Ros didn't react, he added: "Maybe we should have a look at the news while we're at it?"

That – as he had expected - brought an immediate response, animating her as surely as if someone had flicked a switch. They moved inside, and Lucas cringed silently through the concluding inanities of an exceptionally moronic television game show while Ros went to find a bottle. Lucas opened it and poured just as the titles began to roll.

It was a particularly dispiriting bulletin, he thought. The buoyant mood that had lifted the entire country during last summer's Olympics had long since burst under the pressure of falling expectations, rising unemployment, inflated prices and shrinking incomes. Protest marches and rallies against cuts to Government services were reported almost daily, and today was no exception. When the scuffles outside Harvey's Bank were shown, with Crisis Crusade banners clearly visible, Ros's eyes narrowed dangerously. The gloom deepened with an item about a senior prelate accused of child abuse, a well-known TV personality denying allegations of tax evasion, and yet another doom-laden prediction of mayhem in the Eurozone. By the time they reached the 'feelgood' filler item at the end – the birth of a baby white rhino at a zoo in the North – the newsreader's smile was distinctly fixed, and reminded Lucas of Ros's when Mrs Evershed had been regaling her with Fidget's exploits at the reception. Even the rhino looked disgruntled.

When the local news began with a woman stridently haranguing a journalist about some aspect of the Crossrail project, Ros stabbed the remote towards the set as if she wished it were a pistol instead, and switched it off, leaving a silence crackling with tension.

"Maybe the Olympics weren't so bad after all," Lucas said lightly, in an attempt to ease it. "Islamic nutcases notwithstanding."

"Don't remind me," Ros spat. "We've already got the crusaders, the last bloody thing we need is the soldiers of Allah on the warpath as well."

"We'll deal with it." Lucas spread pate on a couple of the crackers she had brought in, offered her one and bit the bullet. "Maybe your father _will_ tell us something useful."

Ros glanced at him. "Us?"

"Yeah." He tried to sound unconcerned. "I always like to see the oak tree the acorn fell from."

"Probably suffering from the effects of the jewel beetle by now. Didn't ever produce much in the way of quality harvest." Ros laid her hand briefly on his arm; that was about as touchy-feely as she ever got. "Thanks, Lucas. I appreciate it."

Lucas was touched by the awkwardness of her attempt at nonchalance, but he squeezed her hand and left it at that. She had been put through the emotional wringer today, she was tired, and she was still on edge. _Proceed with caution._

They sat quietly for a while, occasionally talking about the wedding, but Ros, who had little time for chit-chat unless it had a specific purpose, was looking increasingly weary. Lucas knew she wouldn't ask him to leave, so in the end he took the decision to do so himself. Gratitude not being one of the emotions most frequently selected from Ros's limited range, she merely nodded, waved him off, and closed the door of the flat before he'd opened the door of his car. Lucas smiled wryly as he drove off. Over the years he had come to terms with Ros's abrasiveness and accepted her abrupt manner for what it often was – a defence mechanism. He still didn't understand her – she was a mass of contradictions, and every time he had thought he was starting to, she pulled another one out of the hat - but more recently he had stopped trying so hard. Ros was what she was, and she wasn't about to change for him. He knew he had become more intimate with her than most people would ever dream of getting, and that – at least for now – was enough.

Knowing that she would be arriving at the Grid the following morning ready to crack the whip and expecting everyone to jump when she did, he turned in early himself. The firmest mattress he had been able to find in London plus the passage of time had gradually lessened his need to spend nights on the floor, so he was fast asleep in bed when his phone rang. Still only semi-conscious, he groped for it and knocked it to the floor. _Shit._

He followed the now muffled ringing and the pulsating bluish light under the bed, retrieved it and wriggled back out, several long-unattended dust balls clinging gleefully to his clothes as he did so.

"Lucas?" He sneezed three times in succession before he could manage a hoarse 'yeah'. "Lucas, are you there?"

_Ros? _He peered at his watch, and his stomach lurched. It was a little short of five a.m.

"Yeah. Yeah, what is it?"

"Phelps called. There's been an incident at the Scrubs." Up until now her voice had been crisp and authoritative; now it trembled. "Someone's tried to kill my father."

oOoOoOo


	3. Chapter 3

**_My apologies for the long delay in posting this chapter - lots of summer travelling and a very stubborn bout of jet-lag. Thank you for your patience!  
_**

**Chapter Three**

"Hell." Lucas switched his bedside lamp on. Those last few words had brought him as nerve-janglingly wide awake as the bucket of cold water that had frequently served as his alarm clock in Leshanko. "Is he - "

"In the prison infirmary. Under guard." After that second of audible weakness, Ros's voice had reverted to its usual unemotional hardness. "I'm going over there."

Lucas's every professional instinct protested against_ that _idea, but with an effort, he kept his objections silent and said briskly, "All right. Pick me up in what – fifteen minutes?"

"No. I'm going alone." She spoke swiftly, pre-empting any argument he might have put up. " Red-flash the team and get to the Grid. Conference as soon as I get there."

Lucas sensed she was about to end the call. "Ros, wait. You said you wanted me with you."

"We can't interview him yet. He's unconscious." Again there was the tiniest of quivers in her voice. "But we need to know exactly what happened and who was involved. I have to talk to Phelps. Securely. Face to face."

It made sense, Lucas thought, though he knew that eliciting the information wasn't Ros's only motivation. Before he could find any appropriate words, she added: "Meanwhile, I want a list of every demo and protest, every disruptive incident we've had over the last three months, broken down by region, type, and scale. Get Callum onto CCTV and pull up any footage we've got where we've identified Crisis Crusade involvement. I want every face that appears more than once identified. And bring Lizzie Sandell in as well."

"Right." Lucas knew when resistance was futile, but he also knew there was one question he couldn't avoid asking, however dangerous. He took a deep breath. "What do you want me to tell the team?"

"_Exactly_ what I've just told you. What to do." Lucas could almost hear the line crackling from the pent-up tension in her. "Nothing more until I _know_ more. I'll brief them about … the rest … when I get there."

Lucas shook his head dubiously. No-one would believe that even Ros would issue a red-flash summons at dawn just for a routine brainstorming session. Everyone's first reaction would be to check the breaking news for the _real_ reason behind it, and he wondered just how long information about the attack on Sir Jocelyn could be contained behind the Victorian brickwork of the Scrubs.

"Has anything leaked?" he asked.

"I don't know." Impatience was tautening Ros's voice now. "And I won't find out sitting here, Lucas. Get going."

"Are you sure you - " Lucas began, and then realised that he was speaking into an electronic void. _ Probably just as well. _His last three words – _can manage alone_? – would likely have been just the spark required to ignite the tinderbox of her temper.

He had been staring at his silent mobile as if he expected her to materialise out of it like Aladdin's genie; now he pulled himself together and headed for the shower. Since the Olympics, Ros had again cajoled him into swimming with her. When he had tried to demur, she had confided in him about her battle to master her own tendency to panic in water after almost drowning on the Thames Barrier. Impressed by her courage, and shamed by it at the same time, Lucas had reluctantly returned to the pool. He would never _like_ being in or under water, but her support was at least helping him to face his terror without being totally paralysed by it. In gratitude, he had ventured to suggest that _she_ might try Pilates classes to improve her lung function. He had pretended not to hear her perfectly audible, sarcastic comments about New Age nonsense, and eventually Ros had grudgingly conceded that it might help. Once her strength and stamina began to improve, she started to join him on the more gentle of his runs around Clapham Common. Her triumphant, mocking smile on the day she beat him by a very short head on an impromptu sprint to the café there was all the thanks Lucas had needed.

He switched the radio on as he was dressing, and was just checking his pockets for his keys when the news broadcast began. There was no mention of any incident at Wormwood Scrubs - _yet_ - but Lucas's relief was short-lived as the local round-up reported a burst water main in South Lambeth Road.

_K chortu._ The rush hour started early, and that would back the traffic up in a matter of minutes. He shuddered at the thought of getting a Northern Line tube. The alternative was to walk across the Common and take the train from Clapham Junction. Lucas made a mental calculation and reckoned he could still beat Ros to the office, but first he had to red-flash the team. He began with Chen Liu. The young man's startled response was accompanied by a scrabbling sound and a thud that suggested Chen had fallen out of bed in the process of answering the call, and Lucas repeated Ros's orders twice to make quite sure he'd understood them before moving to his next call. Khalida was much more alert – she had been saying her morning prayers, she explained. Lucas refrained from suggesting that in the circumstances she might feel like adding a few extra ones, and rang Callum. It was the technician who asked the question that Lucas hadn't dared put to Ros.

"Boss doesn't exaggerate," he said tersely. "So if she's that worried, shouldn't we be phoning Gay Paree?"

Lucas's first instinct when Ros hung up had been to do precisely that, but he knew that it would be tantamount to professional hara-kiri.

"Her call," he said curtly. "Just make sure we're ready. And that includes Lizzie – Ros wants everything she's got ready to feed in."

He heard Callum mutter something about being on a starvation diet then, and gave a sympathetic smile. Lizzie Sandell was a good analyst – _when _she concentrated on doing her job rather than engaging in office gossip. When she didn't, she could be a liability, as Lucas knew to his cost after nearly being lynched from an obs van in Brixton. Ruth had been trying to move her on to another Section for months – the issue was one of the few on which harmony reigned between herself and the Section Chief – without success. But the analyst had better be at the top of her game this time; today, the only slack Ros was likely to cut any shirker would come from the end of the noose she hanged them with.

He told Callum to contact Lizzie, unwilling to spend time dragging her out of sleep himself, and then hurried out of the flat. Traffic on the main road already looked heavier than usual, the engines of slow-moving cars emitting the frustrated growl of a caged lion dreaming of the wide-open spaces of the _veld. _Lucas threaded his way between them and set off at a brisk pace across the common. At this hour, he had the place to himself save for a few early-bird joggers and their feathered counterparts. 'Liam Newton', middle-ranking civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, called a cheerful 'Morning!' to the runners he recognised as he cut diagonally past the restored Victorian bandstand and emerged in Battersea Rise.

The illusion of bucolic peace splintered into a crazy-paving mosaic of pounding feet, jabbing elbows and extended Oyster cards as he was swept up in the rising tide of commuters battling their way into the station. Lucas silently cursed the ineptitude of Thames Water as he was picked up and carried into a train like a piece of helpless flotsam by the tsunami of bodies. Several '_sorry_'s and a brace of '_excuse me_'s later, he managed to find two fingers-width of unoccupied space to cling to on the back of a seat as the train moved off. Mobile phone conversations, all conducted with a febrile intensity that belied the mundane triviality of their content, twittered and chirped around him in a babble of half a dozen languages, none of which seemed to be English. Lucas's free arm was pinned to his side by the pressure of bodies, so he read the time from the watch of a massive turbaned Sikh whose arm was an inch from his nose. It would take Ros at least half an hour to get back from the prison to Milbank, possibly more in the rush hour. _Good._ He should be able to to ensure that the team was ready before she arrived.

He had barely had time to feel satisfaction at the prospect when the train began to slow. Lucas craned towards the window and got hit in the face by a vigorously adjusted woman's scarf for his pains. He released his grip to wipe a stray thread from his eye just as the train came to a shuddering, clanking halt, lost his balance and was thrown against the scarf's owner by the impact of stumbling bodies behind him.

"Bloody hell." A male voice carried over the buzz of muttered apologies. "Perfect time to practice an emergency stop."

"Thank your lucky stars it wasn't a sodding three-point turn," another voice chimed in amid a ripple of rueful laughter. Lucas smiled wryly as a stoical, resigned silence settled on the packed carriage. If they'd been on the Parisian RER, revolution would have been brewing. The thought made him think of Harry and Ruth, and _that _reminded him of why he was jammed in here like an over-dressed sardine. With difficulty, he worked his mobile from his jacket pocket. His heart sank as he read the text timed some fifteen minutes earlier. _En route. R. _If he didn't beat her to the Grid there'd be merry hell to pay.

'_Ladies and gentlemen, this is your guard speaking.' _Simultaneously, every head in the carriage turned towards the intercom. '_South West trains apologise for the delay to your service, which has been caused by overcrowding in Waterloo Station. We should be moving again in five to ten minutes. Thank you for your patience and understanding.'_

Lucas fixed his gaze on the shabby houses lining the track and wished he could feel any of either. He wondered what Ros had discovered in Wormwood Scrubs – and how she would cope with it. He had always assumed that her estrangement from Sir Jocelyn was both total and deliberate; it had been a real shock to learn about her letters to him, and to realise just how long and hard she had persisted in trying to bring about reconciliation between them. Carefully, not wanting to leave either a paper trail or an electronic footprint, he had probed Ruth for more details about the attempted coup_ and_ about the relationship between Sir Jocelyn and his daughter. Ruth had been very unwilling to discuss either matter, but nonetheless, she had left him in no doubt about the depth of Ros's affection and – pre-coup, at least – admiration, for her father.

Without warning, the train lurched forward, the movement greeted by a spattering of ironic applause. A large advertisement for a funeral parlour jerked past the window, and Lucas winced. He had to agree with Ros that the attack on her father didn't seem likely to be coincidental. So perhaps her concern about Crisis Crusade wasn't so misplaced, and they really _did_ have a situation developing. As the end of the platform at Waterloo glided into sight, Lucas swallowed past a sudden dryness in his throat. _How the hell will she cope if Myers dies on us? _

_He won't. _He shuffled forward with the other passengers as the train came to a halt, but the doors remained resolutely shut, the buttons unresponsive. Muttering, this time more irritated than before, filled the carriage.

_Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Because of overcrowding in the station, we shall be opening the doors one carriage at a time. Flow-control procedures are in operation on the station concourse, and for your own safety, we ask you to follow instructions given to you by the police and British Rail staff. Thank you._

Lucas frowned. _What the hell is going on?_ He could see disquiet on the faces around him. They were in … what, the fourth carriage? _Shit. How long is this going to take?_

He got the answer to his question twenty minutes later when the doors finally hissed open and released a torrent of frustrated, angry commuters onto the platform only for them to be herded into a narrow corridor formed by two rows of crash barriers. Lucas looked around him incredulously. Waterloo was always busy, and at rush hour it reminded him of _Metropolis_, but the crowds were always moving, hundreds of people weaving and dodging round each other at high-speed with the experience born of long practice. Now, at least as far as he could see over the packed, bobbing heads all around him, what little movement there was was being orchestrated by police officers and British Rail staff through paths like this one. On all sides, people were jammed up against walls, vending kiosks, and each other, taking their rage out on the sweating and struggling officials. The noise was indescribable.

"What's happened?" Lucas shouted to a policeman as he reached the automatic ticket barriers, now jammed open, and the intolerable pressure of bodies around him eased a fraction. He knew it wasn't a terrorist alert. That would have prompted an evacuation; here, people were moving – or trying to – in all directions.

"Not to worry, sir." The officer's reassuring tone contrasted sharply with his red face and harassed expression. "Just keep moving in that direction please, towards the Station Approach Road exit."

Lucas didn't need the Station Approach Road, he wanted to get to the South Bank, but it was on the opposite side of the station and he didn't need to have access to secret intelligence to know that there was no hope of reaching it. When he finally emerged into the street, buffeted and bruised, he saw a van pull up at the kerb. It decanted twenty policemen who stampeded straight into the station. Two senior officers were climbing from a police car, and on impulse, Lucas moved towards them.

"Commander! What's the problem?" Before the man could bite his head off as he was clearly intending to do, Lucas thrust his I.D. card in front of him. The officer's lip curled in distaste, and he waved his colleague into the station.

"Not a spook problem. Few demonstrators, causing disruption. Police matter. We'll deal with it."

"Where?" Lucas persisted. He had neither seen nor heard any sign of a demonstration – no slogans, banners or violence – and the police rushing into the station were ordinary uniformed officers, not riot control units or the SB.

"Ticket offices. It's peaceful. Just long queues, slow-moving. Blocking access." The officer irritably rattled off the words and then none too gently pushed past him.

"Organised?" Lucas shouted after him, but the officer had already been swallowed up by another wave of passengers surging out of the station, and no answer was forthcoming. Not, Lucas thought, that he needed one. It was already in his mind – _Crisis Crusade._

He looked around. A taxi to Milbank was out of the question; there were plenty of them, but the sheer press of people made it almost impossible for them to move. Lucas stepped out into the road and worked his way through the swirling maelstrom of humanity. When he reached Westminster Bridge, he descended to the Embankment, pushed his way unceremoniously through a knot of early-rising Japanese tourists and began to run.

oOoOoOo

"Lucas!" Chen Liu trotted up as he came through the pods. "We thought you might have got stuck at Wa - "

"I did." Lucas looked around the Grid for Ros.

"We tried to phone you but the network went down," Chen continued.

_Not surprised._ Lucas threw off his jacket. "Boss here?"

"Yeah." Chen waved towards the conference room. "We're about to start. She's – erm -"

Lucas groaned inwardly. His shirt was damp with perspiration from his sprint down the embankment, and his feet were burning. "OK. I'm coming. Just need five minutes to clean up."

"You've got two. Make it quick." He jumped at Ros's clipped tones behind him. As Chen skittered off like a startled rabbit, Lucas turned. She looked her usual self, he thought, brisk, alert, and composed.

"News?" he enquired expectantly, but Ros merely said, "Later," and turned away. Lucas, sweaty and out of breath, glared at her back, furious at the snub. _God, you can be a bitch sometimes._ He was on the intemperate point of telling her so when Ros casually called over her shoulder: "Two minutes. " She gave a quick, sardonic smile. "We need you."

_The royal bloody 'we', I assume._ Lucas still miffed, sluiced himself under the cold tap in the bathroom, changed his shirt and socks and hurried to the conference room. Ros was already talking; he slid into his seat as unobtrusively as he could.

" … and I don't believe we should be writing Crisis Crusade off as a minor irritant. Lizzie," her piercing gaze stabbed the length of the table into Ruth's junior, "do you have the list of incidents I asked for?"

Lucas raised a silent prayer. _He _was meant to have ensured that she did.

"Yes." He breathed again. It looked as if it was one of Lizzie's good days. At Ros's nod, she started to read. Lucas was surprised by the length of the list of demonstrations, boycotts and campaigns scattered up and down the country. When the young woman had finished, Ros said: "And you can add Waterloo this morning to that." She snapped at Lucas: "You were there; what happened?"

Trying not to bridle at her tone, Lucas succinctly described the utter chaos he'd witnessed. Callum raised his hand.

"I got the CCTV."

"And I had a little chitchat with the station manager," Khalida offered. "He said that many, many people came to the ticket windows this morning, all of them with complicated queries or complaints that took a jolly long time to deal with. There was no trouble – everyone was very polite and patient, but in rush-hour it caused a most terrible obstruction."

Ros scowled. "It caused a lot more than that. There's a delegation from Brussels here having talks with the Department of Transport about helping to fund the plan to expand capacity at Waterloo and bring those disused Eurostar platforms back into operation. So far they can't even get near the bloody place. Great PR."

"Coincidence," Callum observed.

Ros's lips tightened. "Is it." She swivelled her chair. "Never mind the crowds, focus on the queues." As Callum obeyed, she said; "That's it. Now, look. What do you see?" There was an uneasy silence punctuated by covert glances from one to another until Chen ventured, "People?"

"Bravo. You're getting warm." Ros looked heavenward. "Come on, we're not playing bloody I-Spy here! It's a_ demonstration_. Tell me what you see. _Describe _it."

"It does not really look like a demonstration." Khalida broke the nervous silence. "No disorder or shouting … no slogans."

"Not every demo has to come equipped with a copy of _Anarchy for Dummies_," Ros said dryly. "But go on." When Khalida didn't, she pointed a pencil at Chen Liu, who shook his head uncertainly. "Spit it out."

"Well the … the …" the young Chinese scratched his head in frustration, staring at the screen on which Callum was now showing the endless, tangled queues winding across the concourse. "I don't know, but there's something wrong about it – them …"

Everyone round the table jumped as Ros broke the pencil in two with a crack like a rifle shot. "God, if I'd known I'd have to spell it out for you I'd have brought a Ouija Board. There isn't a single person in those images who -"

" – fits the profile of your average demonstrator." Lizzie Sandell looked challengingly at the section chief. "Too - "

"That's it!" Chen interrupted excitedly. "Look at them – there's barely one under forty, and - "

"And the way they're dressed. Home Counties all the way." Callum ran the image slowly down one of the queues. "They look like something out of Midsomer Murders."

Lucas glanced at Ros, expecting to see satisfaction that her team had finally caught up with her; instead she was running the tip of her tongue along her top lip in a characteristic gesture of nervous tension, almost as if she wished it hadn't. She started as Lizzie Sandell spoke again.

"Ros, Ruth was saying something about that – you know, before they left - that all these incidents are … well, different – these people aren't just the usual rent-a-mob coming out for a Bash The Establishment day trip. They're the kind of people we'd normally expect to be backing the status quo. "

Lucas could tell from Ros's face that it cost her to agree with Ruth Evershed, but she nodded abruptly. "Exactly. _And_ they've planning and organisation." She glanced towards Lucas as he inadvertently shook his head. "What - were all those people at Waterloo victims of mass hypnosis, then? Or paid by the French to scupper the EU loan agreement?"

Chen hastily stifled a giggle. Lucas reminded himself of where Ros had spent the previous couple of hours and why, and kept his tone even.

"No … I agree they were organised. But I think the EU thing _is_ a coincidence - " Ros snorted in disagreement, "and it was peaceful. They're entitled to protest, Ros, and they have a reasonable grievance."

"Tell me about it," Callum grunted. "Bloody five per cent hike in ticket prices – let me know, I'd have gone there with them." He met Ros's glare and shrugged. "Joke, Boss."

Ros didn't look mollified, but just then Chen said uncertainly: "Callum's got a point, though; there's got to be a limit to how much you can squeeze people. "

Ros's expression hardened. "Thank you Chen, when the government needs his Riedonomics no doubt it'll ask for them. In the meantime - " she pointed at the inscription _Regnum Defende_ carved on the conference room wall, " – _that_ is what we're here for. And finding excuses for disruption and instability won't help us to do it."

Chen flinched at the razors in her voice, and Lucas tried again. "Ros, I don't think they're aiming for instability. They're decent, ordinary people trying to make sure someone in government _listens, _that's all_._"

"Yeah." Callum nodded. "Middle England, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. Probably be writing indignant letters to the Times – if the greedy buggers hadn't decided to skulk off behind a paywall." He shrugged. "It's pretty harmless. Hardly a threat to democracy – unless you know something we don't, Boss."

Lucas shot Ros a glance. That, surely, was her cue.

"Callum, forgive me please, but I believe you are wrong." All heads turned to Khalida at the end of the table. "Perhaps you cannot understand."

Callum rolled his eyes. "It's hardly rocket science - "

Ros turned on him. "You've had your say." She snapped the words like a dog crunching a bone. "Khalida."

"It is, I think, as Ros says. In all these protests we have not been seeing the er – the - "

"Usual suspects," Lucas supplied. She gave him a smile of gratitude.

"Yes. This is not _Occupy._ They were a minority, no? Very noisy, much show, little effect. Now we have no resistance to police, no calls to media to make sure that they are there when things … play off. This is more … sophisticated, I think? We all know that people are angry and resentful, and I think Crisis Crusade is trying to use that resentment, but in a more - more subtle way. Clever. They are undermining people's trust and belief in the authorities and in their ability to cope."

"There isn't that much to undermine," Chen said. "I went home last weekend. Remember those evictions on the Wirral? Mum says people are still taking the mick over that."

Everyone nodded. A few weeks earlier, bailiffs had attempted to evict tenants as part of house repossessions. The process had been stopped not by violence but by the bailiffs politely being allowed access, the tenants leaving, and supporters then rushing in to seal up every available door and window with industrial strength glue. The hapless bailiffs had used their mobiles to call police, local residents had phoned the media, and the resulting police rescue had hit the national news headlines and then gone viral on the internet. No-one had much sympathy for either banks or bailiffs, mockery was a highly effective tool, and Lucas had laughed along with everyone else. Ros, he suspected from her stony expression, had not, but it wasn't she who responded.

"Yes, it is funny, of course." Khalida sounded worried, not indignant. "Here you can mock the government because your country is stable, and deep down you believe it will always be so, whatever happens. So you can mock and protest in safety because you still have trust in that, even when things are bad. But if you are living - " she looked across at Callum, "in any country where this trust is gone, no-one with enough authority any more to say no, now we stop, we need order and limits, then it is most definitely not so damned funny. It is fear, and violence. _You_ have not seen this, but I have. It can happen anywhere – even here. And if it does, it is the weak, those who hope the defiance and all will make things better who suffer, because everyone turns on everyone else, and it just becomes devil take the hind leg."

"Hindmost." Ros spoke softly, without amusement, and Lucas realised that the atmosphere in the room had changed with Khalida's words. Ros gave the young Pakistani a silent nod and her gaze slowly ranged around the room.

"Anyone else?" For a moment no-one spoke. Then Callum said abruptly: "Yeah. All right. I still think you're exaggerating, but say you've got a point. A couple of bailiffs in a sticky situation and an EU delegation meeting its Waterloo don't mean revolution." It was a measure of the tension that nobody laughed, Lucas thought. Callum hesitated, but forged on. "I still don't see any reason for expecting Crisis Crusade to be rolling the tumbrils down Whitehall - unless there's a reason to fear them that we don't know about." He looked directly at Ros Myers. "Like the one that made you send the red-flash, Boss."

Callum was one of the rare officers who would challenge Ros without backing down. Lucas stiffened in anticipation, and Ros gave him a slight smile with a hint of melancholy about it. He understood. Whatever the news she was about to share with her colleagues now, it would surely alter their attitude to her forever.

"Yes, there is." She scrutinised each officer in turn. When she was absolutely sure five pairs of eyes were riveted on her, she began to speak.

oOoOoOo

_Thank you for reading. Please review! :)_


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter Four_**

"Lucas, have you got a minute?"

Lucas lifted his eyes from the screen of his computer and saw Chen Liu standing in front of his desk.

"Sure, what is it?"

"It's – um - " The younger man hesitated, and his gaze drifted across the Grid towards Harry's office, where Ros was talking intently on the phone with persons unknown. Obviously, this wasn't something he wanted to share with the section chief.

"It's all right," Lucas said wryly. "She's not Harry; she can't lip-read." He pointed towards a spare chair and, just for extra reassurance, manoeuvred himself to block Ros's view of the young Chinese. "Go on."

"Well," Chen said nervously, "it's just that Khalida and I were talking, and – well, we both think maybe Harry should know about this. You know, digging into Crisis Crusade."

Lucas smiled. "Why, don't you think we're good enough to do it without him?" he asked, in a teasing tone that he hoped would reassure.

It didn't work. Chen Liu wriggled uncomfortably. "No, I didn't mean that, but it seems wrong that he shouldn't know … or – or be able to give his approval. Especially now."

Lucas kept the smile on his face and his rising anger on a very tight rein. He wanted to ask Chen exactly what he meant by '_now_' but he already knew the answer. _Now that we know what Ros told us yesterday. Now that we aren't sure we can trust her._

_Damn you. _He addressed the mental rebuke not to the young man looking anxiously over the top of his computer, but to Ros Myers. She hadn't _needed _to regale the whole team yesterday with every technicolour detail of her father's involvement in the coup attempt, and certainly not her own. The Governor of Wormwood Scrubs was turning out to be unexpectedly gifted at keeping news of the attack as securely behind its gates as he did the prison's inmates, so she hadn't even needed to disclose who Jocelyn Myers was; at a pinch, she could have referred to him by a code name. The three younger officers had been visibly shaken by what she had told them; Lucas had watched every emotion, from shock to uncertainty, via disbelief and suspicion, washing over their faces. The sly, triumphant leer on Lizzie Sandell's had prompted him to corner her by the water cooler afterwards and threaten her with dire consequences if she ever repeated a single syllable of what Ros had said. He thought he had sealed her lips, but he wasn't sure, and he was furious with Ros for creating the situation.

_You didn't need to do it!_ In utter exasperation, he had told her as much on the way home. When her initial response had been a condescending look, he had added heatedly: "You, of all bloody people – when did you last bare your soul about _anything_ more personal than your taste in teabags?"

"Come on, Chen," he said lightly now. "Harry's on his honeymoon. You can't red-flash a man on a _bateau-mouche_ in the moonlight."

Chen Liu half-smiled, but he still looked ill at ease, and he peeped worriedly over Lucas's shoulder like a soldier in a trench wondering what was awaiting him over the top. Lucas sighed.

"What is it that's bothering you - your orders don't make sense?"

"No, no." For a moment he thought Chen was going to back-track and drop the matter, but then the young man gathered his courage and blurted: "If we're going to dig, then okay, but – well isn't there a – a conflict? What with Ros's father involved, and she might - " he petered out again.

_She might be influenced. She might not be reliable. She might be on 'their' side, not ours._

Lucas gritted his teeth. There was only one way to nip this in the bud. He looked sternly up at the young Chinese and deliberately hardened his voice.

"Talk sense, Chen. Harry quite happily went off on honeymoon and left this section in Ros's hands – and he knew about her father's demand to talk to us. He was confident she'd take the right decision about it – the right decision _for the Service, _not for herself – and he would be now, too. And _he's_ known what you learnt yesterday for years." _Plus a lot more_, he thought. "He trusts her absolutely. Are you telling me he's wrong and you don't?"

The abrupt change in his manner and the dropping of Harry's name did the trick.

"No, of course not." Chen shook his head so vigorously he unsettled his glasses. Clumsily, he resettled them on his nose. "No, I just – we just wondered - "

"Well, I'd stop if I were you. The Boss doesn't think a lot of wondering, unless she's ordered it."

"Yes – er, no. No, she – I - she ordered me to – to give Callum a hand with the CCTV; you know, matching the faces we've got in the demos. There's a lot of it, and - "

"Good." Lucas eased his chair to one side so that Ros's field of vision was clear, and glanced round. She was looking straight at them. "Better get on with it then." As the abashed young Chinese hurried back to his own work-station, the phone rang.

"I've been summoned by the Gnome." Ros's voice was as crisp as ever. "Can you come in, I need you."

_You need your bloody brains tested; that's what you need._ Aloud, Lucas said in an equally business-like tone, "Give me five minutes," hung up, and sat still, concentrating on regaining his equilibrium. Ros's antennae were incredibly acute; if he went into the office still irritated with her, she would sense it immediately, and he didn't want an argument. The previous evening he had been lucky. When he had accused her of undermining the team's trust and confidence in her by being so recklessly, _uncharacteristically _open about matters personal, Ros had not given him the verbal scourging he expected. Instead, she had said quietly: "Do you think they'd trust me more if I'd hidden who he was, or tried to cover up his little peccadillos _and _mine? They're not stupid; Callum had worked out quick enough that there was a reason for the red-flash that I hadn't disclosed. What if they'd all found out the truth from some muck-racking hack in The Sun, or through a tweet from some anonymous scandal-monger? There'll be one, sooner or later. This way they should at least understand I'm playing straight with them. It's a gamble, Lucas. Some you win, some you lose. And anyway … if their trust in me is so flimsy that it can be torn to shreds by my being honest about my brief career as a _putchiste_ in Prada, then - " She had finished the sentence with a shrug of apparent indifference, but she had kept her eyes away from his face. When Lucas suggested stopping off for a quick supper somewhere she had brusquely declined, dropped him at his flat and driven off to her own with an abrupt '_goodnight_'. He took a deep breath and crossed to the office.

"What's Chen's problem?" Ros snapped as he walked in.

_So much for my covert meeting techniques. _"The identification process is taking longer than they thought, that's all," Lucas lied smoothly. Ros snorted.

"Crisis Crusade's been working overtime; tell him and Callum they'll be doing the same until they've finished." She pulled on her coat. "Well, come on, where's yours?"

"Don't need it," Lucas shot back, unwilling to admit that he hadn't expected she would want him to go with her. He regretted his bravado a few minutes later when she decreed that they would walk. A blustery wind was whipping the river into whitecaps, and by the time they reached Whitehall, only sheer willpower and Ros's sardonic glances were preventing him from shivering. The fusty warmth of the Home Office corridors, usually a source of vexation, was a positive relief.

The young secretary in the reception area gave him an interested look as they entered, but it slid from her face like melting snow when she saw the glacial look in Ros's eyes. Ros said curtly, "Myers, Thames House," strode past her to the office door, tapped on it twice and walked in. Lucas, taken aback, hastily caught her up and closed it behind them as she was shaking hands with William Towers.

"Home Secretary, this is our SCO, Lucas North."

A frown knotted the little man's brow. "Met you somewhere … North, North …" He smiled triumphantly. "Ah! That's it, Chris McKenzie." Lucas felt his jaw drop, and hastily closed his mouth; he hadn't expected the Home Secretary to be _au fait_ with any of his three working aliases. "Bomb defuser _par excellence._ Delighted to see you." He waved them both to seats and pressed his intercom. "Coffee for three please, Jennifer." He looked assessingly at Lucas. "You recovered from the decontamination procedure?" Before Lucas, completely thrown by his memory for detail, could reply, he added: "Mind, I'd have swapped places with you in a jiffy. Damned stink bomb of Harry's was still up my nostrils a month later. Had to change my damned after-shave for something stronger."

Lucas mumbled something apologetic, aware of Ros, her eyes expressionless but her lips twitching, alongside him. Towers waited until Jennifer had poured the coffee and left, and then turned his attention to Ros, all traces of mirth gone, his eyes alert and wary.

"So, Miss Myers. You wanted to brief me about something."

"Yes, sir. Thank you for seeing us." Ros sipped her coffee before she spoke. She kept her voice very low, and Lucas was amused to see Towers leaning forward to catch her words. He knew this was one of what Ros sarcastically called her WMDs (Windbag Management Devices), used to check that that politicians were actually listening to what she said rather than mentally composing their next soundbite for the media. It was working, too. Towers's frown of concentration was deepening by the minute, and when he learned exactly how many protests and demonstrations Crisis Crusade appeared to have been behind in the last few months, he lifted a hand to stop her. Ros raised an enquiring eyebrow.

"You're telling me, then, that this is orchestrated disruption rather than spontaneous protest?" When she nodded, he continued: "Then why, may I ask, has Harry chosen to lock this information up like the Crown Jewels in Thames House rather than share it with the Government?"

Lucas winced; Ros didn't bat an eyelash. "There was no consensus that it _was_ orchestrated, Home Secretary, and it's Service policy not to provide you with information that is at best disputed, and at worst, purely speculative. We find clarity is easier to deal with."

Towers made a huffing noise, and Lucas suspected that he had also heard Ros's unspoken words '_for simple-minded folk like politicians'._ If he had, he chose not to challenge her on it.

"And you have that clarity and consensus now?"

"Yes, sir." Lucas lifted his cup to drink _and_ to obscure his expression. That was a blatant lie. Yes, some people – including him – were beginning to wonder if Ros had a point, but the only person to agree wholeheartedly with her interpretation of the situation yesterday had been Khalida.

"So what's given it to you?" Towers demanded.

"Several things, Home Secretary." Ros delicately drained her cup. "Firstly, the demographics involved." She explained the one thing on which they _had_ all agreed, and Towers's initial puzzlement changed to concern. Hardly surprising, Lucas thought wryly, the backbone of the coalition's political support came from precisely the sort of people about whom she was talking.

"Go on," he said in some confusion, as the pencil he had been twirling between his fingers flew up into the air and clattered over the desk to the carpet.

"Secondly, the events at Waterloo yesterday. Mr North was caught up in them; if you wish, he can explain to you what he saw."

Hurriedly, Lucas pulled himself together, and at the politician's nod, did so. When he had finished, Towers looked back at Ros.

"This kind of thing is hardly unexpected, Miss Myers. We knew that our austerity measures were bound to make people disgruntled and resentful. We've all been living the good life on tick for far too long; it was certain to hurt when the bill finally had to be paid. I'm aware that many people think politicians live in feathered nests in a gold-plated cloud cuckoo-land, but we also hold season tickets, buy expensive petrol for our cars and have mortgages to pay off. Besides," he gave her a disapproving look, "this _is_ a democracy, and the people are entitled to express their discontent - provided that their action doesn't break the law. It's important that they have that opportunity."

Lucas groaned inwardly. Ros hated it when politicians went into Winston Churchill mode, and he waited for a cutting retort. She said nothing, and Towers looked at her suspiciously.

"And thirdly?" he asked, when the silence stretched out.

Lucas saw the tell-tale movement in Ros's throat as she swallowed.

"Home Secretary, you're aware that my father is serving a twenty-year sentence in Wormwood Scrubs for his part in an attempt made seven years ago to overthrow the government?"

_Of course he's aware. _Lucas watched Towers carefully as his face closed. He had voted along with other members of the JIC to deny her promotion to Harry's job because of it.

"I thought you came here to brief me on _current_ threats to national security, Miss Myers. Not to reminisce over old ones."

"He's due to appear before the parole board in the next few weeks." Ros continued as if he hadn't spoken, and William Towers bristled.

"And I am certainly _not_ intending to waste valuable time listening to any special pleading on Sir Jocelyn's behalf." Lucas felt his palms becoming damp in anticipation of Ros losing her temper, but if anything, her face turned slightly paler rather than red. "I fail to see the relevance of this to Crisis Crusade, Miss Myers."

Ros's mouth twisted slightly into an expression that might have conveyed pity for his ignorance, but which Lucas knew was actually an expression of pure, unadulterated contempt. _Straight into the trap. Bravo, Ros. _He kept his face straight.

"Perhaps I could explain." She paused. "With your indulgence, of course."

Without waiting for it, she told him about the information her father claimed he wanted to pass to MI-5, and then about the attack on him. Towers, Lucas thought, was looking more and more like a stranded fish, mouth open and visibly flapping. After Ros concluded her briefing and sat looking at him with an expression of respectful politeness that barely veiled her disdain, he dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief.

"Harry know about these shenanigans at the Scrubs?" Ros shook her head, and he barked: "Why not?"

"Harry's on leave, sir, and during his absence I'm acting head of the unit. If it becomes necessary to contact him, I will."

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in his seat. _Christ, but she's pushing it. _He wondered uneasily if Ros wasn't letting her long-repressed anger at the way Whitehall had treated her get the better of her. He tried to think of a way of defusing the tension as she and Towers wordlessly locked eyes across the desk. Before he could, the Home Secretary cracked.

"Crisis Crusade's activities and this attack don't necessarily have to be linked, Miss Myers. There is such a thing as coincidence."

Ros smiled thinly. "Not in intelligence work, Home Secretary. I can get my technical specialist to compute the possibility for you accurately if you wish. But the likelihood of my father wishing to speak to MI-5, an organisation he loathes, about those 'activities', and then falling victim to an attempt on his life less than 24 hours later when he hasn't suffered more than an ingrowing toenail for the last seven years, must be in the range of several billion to one."

Towers glared, got up, turned his back on them both and stared out of the window into the building's inner courtyard.

"So what are you saying?" he asked, without turning.

Lucas glanced at Ros. She took a deep breath.

"That Crisis Crusade has a specific agenda; that its aim is not just lawful protest against government policy and harmless letting off steam, but to undermine the bedrock of social and political stability in this country. That its activities are being planned, guided and commanded not by the people we see carrying them out, but by a very intelligent, sophisticated individual or group of individuals as yet unidentified who understand tactics, publicity and propaganda – _and_ the current mood in the country. That the attempt on my father's life is confirmation that he _does _have information that could help us find out who they are, exactly what they have in mind, and prevent them from doing it."

Towers turned. His grey eyes, which usually twinkled with bonhomie – real or manufactured, depending on the circumstances – were hard and flat, like two pebbles picked from the beach. "But you have no proof of any of that."

Lucas was beginning to feel like the net in a tennis match. He decided to play a lob of his own.

"Home Secretary, if we're right, there could be a real threat to national security. Fiscal restraint, benefit cuts, austerity – they're all necessary, of course," he added hastily, as Towers's flinty gaze switched to him, "but they're putting the social fabric of the country under real strain. Many people are feeling the pressure for the first time since the war. After sixty years of nothing but rising expectations, they're having to scale them back. Resentful people in that kind of situation can be manipulated, sir."

"And stampeded," Ros added quietly, "by rumours, or misinformation. The herd instinct. Mass panic isn't pretty, sir. And the previous government did contemplate the possibility of calling out the army in 2008, had the banking system actually collapsed."

Towers's complexion took on the hue of a ripe plum. "This is not 2008, Miss Myers! And I'll thank you for _not_ using the same crude scare tactics on me!"

Ros fell silent. Lucas murmured, "Still, fertile territory for such a group …" and then followed her example.

"_If_ they exist," Towers snapped. "_If_ Miss Myers can provide hard evidence that Crisis Crusade is the threat she claims it is. And that her f … um … the information being offered is authentic and relevant, and not just a Get Out of Jail Free card."

"My team is working on your first point as we speak, Home Secretary." Ros's voice had tightened at his last comment. "We're in the process of identifying as many of those who have been involved as we can; then we'll begin to check for links between them and see if we can penetrate their membership. As to the second, as I said, I think the authenticity of my father's information has been proved by the attack. I believe he's sincere."

Towers shook his head dubiously. "You're bound to think that. You're his daughter."

Ros's chin came up. "Actually, Home Secretary, in practical terms, I'm not. To my father, I'm a pariah, and have been for the last seven years, as you'll recall from the fate of my many attempts to correspond with him."

The tension was electric as Towers resumed his seat and poured himself the remains of the coffee. For a moment only sound was the tinkling of his spoon against the Royal Doulton.

"Then who's intending to extract this 'authentic' information?"

"Mr North will interview him as soon as he's conscious and able to communicate." Ros flicked the tiniest of smiles in Lucas's direction. "The prison governor has already initiated an internal investigation. Once we have the results, the picture should become a great deal clearer. I will keep you fully briefed. You have my word."

"Hmm." Towers's fingers drummed an irritable tattoo on his desk. "When did you say Harry's due back?"

"Next Saturday, sir." There was a tense pause during which Lucas silently willed the meeting to end. He felt a reluctant sympathy for William Towers; his relationship with Harry couldn't have been described as smooth, but they were of an age, and despite Harry's streak of rebellious independence, both were part of the Establishment Towers understood. Having to work with an assertive, abrasive_ woman_ the age of his own daughter was taking him way out of his comfort zone, and his testiness was becoming more apparent by the minute. At the same time, Lucas felt for Ros. So far, she had maintained her composure, and – well, _almost_ – the respectful courtesy she owed to Towers's position. But she was proud, and Lucas didn't expect her self-restraint to hold much longer in the face of the politician's contempt for her father_ and_ his patent lack of confidence and trust in her as exemplified by that last question.

"Then you will continue with your investigations into Crisis Crusade," Towers said. Lucas cringed; a civilian giving operational instructions to Ros was the equivalent of trying to wrap a bull in a Soviet flag. "Once you have extracted any information Sir Jocelyn has – assuming that he has any – you will report the details to this office without delay. Is that perfectly clear?"

Lucas bit his tongue to stifle his gasp of shock. That was an intelligence decision, and Ros's to make. The Home Office might be politically responsible for supervising the security services, but this was stretching Towers's remit way beyond its limits.

"Home Secretary, I -" Ros hesitated, moistened her lips and then said uncertainly: "Yes. Yes, it … it is."

William Towers nodded a smug, satisfied little nod. "Good." With her acquiescence, he seemed to feel that he had reasserted his rightful authority, and his tone became more peremptory. "And you will brief Harry forthwith."

Lucas watched Ros shift uncomfortably in her chair. "Of course, Home Secretary. That goes without saying." She glanced at her watch. "I apologise for having taken up so much of your time." She got to her feet, and Lucas hurried to follow suit. "We'll keep you briefed about any further developments."

They were almost at the door when the politician rapped: "Miss Myers!" Both turned. "One more thing. As of this moment Sir Jocelyn Myers is only a _potential _source of important information. An unproven – er - "

"Asset," Lucas said helpfully. Alongside him, he could sense that the coiled spring of tension in Ros was about to unwind, with potentially disastrous consequences.

"Quite." Towers did his best to wither him with a look, but Lucas had several years of coping with Ros's efforts under his belt, and compared to her, William Towers was a harmless amateur. "You will treat him and his information as such until you are absolutely certain that both are reliable." He fixed his gaze sternly on Ros. "Your involvement in this situation is … unfortunate … but, in Harry's absence, inevitable. So I trust that I can rely on your treating it as a _strictly_ professional matter, without allowing the personal to intrude or influence you in any way whatsoever. Miss Myers?"

_You bastard._ Lucas felt his fingers tightening involuntarily into fists, and looked at Ros. Her lips were compressed so tightly they were almost invisible.

"If I had _ever_ allowed the personal to intrude or to influence me, my father would now be more likely to be sitting behind your desk in this office than in a prison cell. Good afternoon, Home Secretary." As Lucas opened the door for her she swept through it without a backward glance. Lucas followed and, as the only farewell he felt the man deserved, slammed it shut behind him.

oOoOoOo

"Coffee," Ros said abruptly as they reached the street. It was a statement, not a question, and Lucas merely followed her obediently as she cut down King Charles Street, across Horse Guards Road and into St James' Park. She was walking quickly, fuelled, he knew, by her anger at the Home Secretary's comments.

"I'll get it," he offered, as they came in sight of the small green trailer that stood permanently just inside the gates. He bought two coffees and a _pain au chocolat_, the only pastry he knew Ros actually liked.

"Here." She was staring towards the Serpentine, at the edge of which small children were being encouraged by their parents to offer bread to some of what Lucas thought must be the fattest, most spoiled ducks and swans in the UK.

"Thanks." Ros jerked her head towards them. "We used to come here and do that. Whenever _Sir Jocelyn_," she drew inverted commas in the air, " was in between postings."

Lucas didn't quite know what to say, so he just smiled and offered half the _pain au chocolat_. Ros flicked a quick glance up at him, and with a start he realised that her eyes were wet. He hadn't hit anyone since flooring Asa Darlak, but now he was struck with a sudden desire to storm back to the Home Office and practice his right hook on William Towers. He went to put his arm round her and stopped as Ros instantly shrank just out of reach. After a moment, he tried another tack.

"So … we're going to keep Dopey briefed then? _And_ notify Harry - forthwith?"

"Don't be stupid." Ros sniffed, and ran a finger swiftly under each eye.

_Thought so._ Unlike Towers, Lucas knew that in her professional persona Ros was not only a good liar but also a consummate actress.

"He'll be royally pissed off," he ventured.

She scattered a handful of pastry crumbs to a lone duck whose personal satnav seemed to be on the blink as it waddled past, heading for Horseguards.

"I bloody well hope so." She swallowed the rest of her coffee. "He'll get what I think he needs when I'm good and ready to give it to him."

Lucas nodded. This wasn't the time to argue with her any further. She was angry, humiliated and upset – understandably so. Best to get back to the Grid and talk things over when she had full control over herself again.

"Finished?" Ros held her hand out for his cup and paper napkin. She smiled mockingly. "At least that'll stop you getting hypothermia on the way back."

Lucas stuck his tongue out at her as she walked away to the nearest litter-bin, and jumped as his phone tinkled into action. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and looked at the screen. "Yeah, Callum, go on."

As he listened, Ros darted back across the path just ahead of two mounted police officers. One of them said something to her, and Lucas saw her flash a rare, genuine smile up at him in response. She was still smiling as she approached, but her face changed as she saw Lucas's expression.

"What is it?"

Lucas mouthed '_hang on_' and, into the phone, said: "OK. Yeah. No, we're on our way. As soon as we get there, yeah. Thanks." He ended the call and met her eyes.

_Jesus, how the hell am I supposed to tell her that? _He swallowed hard, but his throat still felt as if someone had tied a knot in it round about the level of his pharynx.

"Lucas! _What is it_?"

oOoOoOo

**_Thank you for reading and a special thank you to my regular reviewers! If anyone else wants to join them, all comment is very welcome! :)_**


	5. Chapter 5

_Sorry this one's taken so long. Thank you for your patience, and an extra big thank you to everyone who takes the time to review regularly - please feel free to join their ranks!_

_Chapter Five_

"Ready to go home?" Lucas enquired. Ros wasn't actually _doing_ anything – merely sitting at Harry's desk, resting her chin on her clasped hands and staring into the middle distance - though a deep frown between her eyes suggested that her brain was working overtime. She jumped.

"Sorry, what?"

Lucas repeated himself. "I don't think there's much more we can do before tomorrow morning." He produced his most winning smile; sometimes, it worked. "Except eat and sleep."

Ros massaged her forehead. "Has Lizzie been working on those people?" So far Callum had produced CCTV footage of two individuals – one male, one female – who had been spotted during at least two incidents involving Crisis Crusade. Ros had immediately ordered the analyst to identify them and then collate every single piece of information available on them – personal, financial, criminal, medical, the lot.

"Yeah, she's made a start. Khalida said she'd take the man, to lessen the load. And Chen'll give Callum a hand to trawl the remaining CCTV tomorrow."

"Good." Ros winced.

"Headache?" Lucas asked. When she nodded, he said cautiously: "Rest would help."

Ros gave him a look that clearly said '_stop nagging_', but she got up. "I suppose you want a chauffeur to Clapham?"

Lucas was about to deny it when he noticed the lines of strain around her eyes and mouth. Ros would no more ask for company than she would apply for a transfer to the FSB, but he was getting a little better at reading her unspoken feelings.

"I'll settle for a burger in Barnes," he said, cheerfully as they left. Ros's lip curled.

"Burger." She uttered the word with a contempt she usually reserved for Richard Dalby, the Russians and occasionally Ruth, then confirmed his suspicions. "You can settle for soup and scrambled eggs. Or walk."

Lucas pulled the face he knew she expected, but he was relieved. Sarcasm was Ros's 'normal', and infinitely preferable to the distress she had earlier been unable to conceal behind her mask of rigid self-control. Callum's message that her father was starting to regain consciousness should have been a relief in both personal _and _professional terms, but Jeremy Phelps' warning that he could no longer delay informing Lady Annabel of her husband's condition had shattered that. Ros had spent most of the afternoon in the office on the telephone, emerging only twice with a face like thunder that deterred anyone not planning a career change in the next 24 hours from approaching her. Meanwhile Lucas had fielded queries from junior officers, supervised the work on Crisis Crusade as best he could, and wrestled with his own conviction that he should be persuading her to contact Harry. Finally, she had brusquely confirmed to the re-assembled team that she and Lucas would be going to Wormwood Scrubs to interview her father the following morning. To Callum's uneasy '_what about the family?' _she had snapped: "Dealt with," and swept out. Lucas, left with with several junior officers gazing worriedly at him, had added dryly: "Well? You heard her," and dismissed them. He wished now that he could as easily dismiss his own increasing concern about Ros's ability to maintain enough emotional distance from this situation to handle it properly.

He watched her warily out of the corner of his eye as they sped south. She had already made it clear that she was aware of his doubts; she wouldn't take kindly to his raising them again. Besides, both she and Harry were constantly reprimanding him for getting 'too involved', so maybe _his_ judgement, not Ros's own, was at fault. He groaned inwardly. _Sod you, Harry Pearce. _Advice was what he needed, and the one person he trusted to supply it was wooing his new wife on the banks of the Seine.

The car swerved sharply, almost carving a slice off a wobbling cyclist. _Bloody hell, Ros. _Lucas sometimes thought he'd rather go another round with the Russians than endure this kind of torture. For all her other talents, Ros Myers was a rotten driver. Stress made her worse, and the way she was driving now was testimony to just how unsettled she was; with every corner Lucas was tempted to explain to her exactly _why _the vehicle had four wheels.

_Not today. _If a set-to was on the cards, let it be for a better reason. He tightened his seatbelt, bit his tongue and prayed silently until she finally brought the car to a juddering halt in Barnes. Ros's look dared him to comment as she switched off the engine, but Lucas was determined to keep his powder dry until he was ready to fire his opening salvo. He followed her in a meek silence to the flat, where Ros took him by surprise with possibly the most under-used word in her vocabulary.

"Sorry." She raked her hair off her face. "My head's splitting. Can you amuse yourself for a few minutes while I shower and take something?"

Lucas had been concentrating so hard on surviving the drive that he hadn't really considered her - other than as a threat to his immediate welfare. Only now did he realise how pale and drawn she looked.

"Yeah, sure." As she went out, he called after her: "I'll get started!"

He had put the soup on to heat and was just cracking the last of the eggs when she returned, wearing leggings under a black sweater that looked as if it had been purchased when she was three times her current size – whenever that might have been.

"Feeling better?" he asked. He raised the whisk. "Ready to scramble?"

Ros gave a twisted smile, and dropped a pat of butter into the frying pan.

"That's what my father used to say. When he had the Moscow embassy. The KGB bugs used to outnumber the creepy-crawly variety in there about five to one; if there was anything _really_ confidential to deal with he'd always go to the one room properly equipped to scramble transmissions."

Lucas added a small helping of mayonnaise to the eggs. She'd given him an opening. Keeping his eyes on the bubbling mixture, he said casually, "Family tradition then in a way, keeping secrets?"

There was a fractional pause behind him, then a clatter of crockery as two plates were laid noisily on the table.

"In a way." Ros poured two bowls of steaming soup. There was a brittle edge to her voice that in normal circumstances would have caused Lucas to back off. Still without looking up, he enquired: "Do I need to keep stirring?"

She peered over his shoulder and said dryly, "No, you've done enough." Lucas dished up as she poured two glasses of wine. Her face, he thought, was even more set than the eggs. He tried for his best hangdog expression.

"Hope I haven't overdone it."

Ros chewed in silence for a moment. At last, she met his eyes. The naked unhappiness in hers was so unexpected that he let a forkful of egg slither back onto his plate with an unappetising _plop._

"When the scrambling wasn't enough, _he_ used to talk in coded language, too. At this rate, we'll need a bloody interpreter tomorrow."

Lucas hesitated. The sentimental streak in him, on which Ros had poured scorn more than once, wanted to drop the whole issue to avoid causing her further pain. If she hadn't been acting Chief of Counter-Terrorism, he would have done.

"Does Phelps know what happened yet?"

Ros pushed down another mouthful of egg. "They're still investigating. Looks like a heart attack."

_Looks like. _Lucas frowned. "Has he got a history of heart trouble?"

Ros unconsciously bit her lip. "No. At least, he hadn't seven years ago. Occasional high blood pressure, slightly raised cholesterol; the kind of thing any man his age in a high-pressure job might have. Phelps will give us details tomorrow; discuss it over an open line and we might as well put everything straight on Twitter. Hashtag - myerstraitor."

Lucas winced, then took the plunge. "What about your – I mean his - "

"Our. In law, anyway." Ros gave a painful smile and took a deep swallow at her wine. "The Governor's told my mother he's had a heart attack. Nothing more. She's his next of kin. He held off as long as he could, but he had to tell her that much; the last thing we need is allegations of neglect or threats of legal action. He invited her to the prison tomorrow." She stared into her glass. "It might be useful; she always made it her business to know most of Daddy's."

_Shit. _The childhood endearment had slipped out unnoticed, increasing Lucas's unease exponentially. Questions were swarming to the front of his mind._ And will she share that 'business' with MI-5? After we brought 'Daddy' down? By the way, have we got the official green light for any of this? Why the hell didn't you tell the team? _seemed like a good one, but he knew what Ros would reply to that. _Need to know._ In theory, she'd be right; the time to give the others more detail would be _after_ the interview, when – if - Sir Jocelyn's information proved to be of value. With an effort, Lucas could accept _that_, but … he shook his head, and Ros's expression darkened. "What?"

"We? You told the Home Secretary _I'd_ be interviewing your father."

"Yes - _if_ he won't talk to me. He wants the head of Counter-Terrorism, Lucas. For the moment I'm it. Besides, I know him better than anyone. I know how he thinks; I can read him. We don't know if this is just one big _provokatsiya _yet; you said so yourself. I have to try."

That wasn't what she'd told William Towers, and she _certainly_ hadn't mentioned interviewing her mother. Now she added impatiently, "We'll be wearing a wire; if he won't co-operate, you take over and I'll withdraw and listen in."

Lucas shifted uneasily. "Ros, prison regulations - "

Ros snorted. "Are a poor relation to the provisions of the Official Secrets Act. You should know that. The Governor knows; I told him. And _yes_, we have clearance, Lucas - with all the appropriate bells and whistles. I haven't been discussing the latest Test score with the powers-that-be all afternoon! " Her eyes flashed like two emeralds set in ivory. "Any more hairs you want to split? Any further objections? "

_Yes. You should be bringing Harry in. _Saying that would bring her simmering irritation to the boil. Lucas pushed aside the remains of his now congealing scrambled egg and went for his fallback position.

"Yeah. Isn't this all a bit too close to home, Ros? Maybe you should just give the Scrubs a miss? If I'm wired you can listen in just as well from the Grid. Prompt me, even. If you don't want me to go without back-up, let Khalida come. This – you – it's against every rule in the book. It's not fair on you either; not even you can_ possibly_ be expected to make an impartial judgement call in these circumstances. Look, Ros … I understand how hard this is for you personally - "

The little hillock of rubbery egg on his plate quivered as Ros shoved her chair back and moved with quick, tense strides to stare from the window, in which the reflection of her disembodied white face glared at him.

"You 'understand'." She shook her head. "You understand _nothing, _Lucas."

It took Lucas a second to recognise the disappointment lurking beneath the surface of her dismissive tone. He gulped.

"I thought - " he began, but Ros cut him off.

"So did I_, _Lucas_._ I thought I could rely on you when I needed support this week - e_specially_ this week; that I had your trust. I _thought _you were on my side. More fool me." She shook her head. "This discussion is over. _I'm _going to bed._ You'll _accompany me to Wormwood Scrubs at nine-thirty tomorrow. That's an order."

Now Lucas got up too, his face burning at her peremptory, autocratic tone.

"Ros, Harry -"

Ros, already halfway out of the door, whirled back to face him. "Harry is on leave. _I'm _issuing the orders. So exactly what part of yours don't you understand, Lucas?" She added something else, but he didn't catch it as she stormed out. Seconds later her bedroom door slammed.

Now Lucas's blood was up too, and he was sorely tempted to make an angry exit of his own through the front door. He checked the impulse and turned to the washing-up instead. Ros's anger always manifested itself as controlled, icy, cutting sarcasm. An outburst like this was more a fig leaf for barely-concealed hurt, doubt … and loneliness. He'd heard Harry say often enough that his was a solitary position if you didn't have the right support, and his absence was depriving Ros of about her only unconditional source of it. William Towers had offered her little but doubt and suspicion, and now his own qualms were undermining her as well.

He heaved a sigh that blew soap bubbles into the air. He'd said his piece. While Harry was away, operational authority lay with Ros. She'd given him his orders, and either he obeyed them wholeheartedly or he refused them and took the consequences. _Put up or shut up, North._

He moved quietly into the hall. Not a sound issued from the bedroom. By the following morning Ros would be in control again, her mind working with the speed and precision of a surgical scalpel, the emotions churned up by the sudden resurrection of her family skeletons repressed. _Best leave her._

Still he dithered. At the wedding, Harry had made it crystal-clear that it was his duty to give Ros whatever support she needed, and if he didn't, he'd have some explaining to do. But that wasn't what finally swayed his decision; it was the sense of betrayal and disappointment behind those few bitter words - _I thought you were on my side. _He turned the bedroom door handle.

Ros was lying on her back, hands clasped behind her head, and Lucas thought she might have been crying. She threw a filthy look, but nothing else, in his direction and he risked closing the door.

"Look," he said, "I'm a bloody fool."

Ros snorted derisively. "Well, _that's_ the kind of hot information that can turn the course of an entire operation." She sat up, watching him as he changed. Lucas propped himself next to her. This particular operation would go south faster than the Parisians in August if they embarked on it in an atmosphere of resentment and mistrust.

"So are you, though." Her head jerked round. "Thinking I don't understand. Don't trust you." Before she could spit back a scathing reply, he went on, "Come on, Ros. If there's one person in this section who knows _exactly_ what it feels like to try doing this job dragging a ball and chain of mistrust around, it's yours truly. For half the top brass and most of Whitehall it's still a toss-up whether I'm an MI-5 officer or a double agent for the FSB. And I'm bloody sure Ruth puts a flea in Harry's ear every time she catches me reading Pushkin in the cafeteria." That brought a reluctant smile. "I _do_ trust you, Ros. I always have done. Long before you had any real reason to trust me." He thumped his pillow into position with his fist. After a moment's hesitation, Ros accepted his unspoken invitation and slithered down under the duvet alongside him. Lucas propped himself on his elbow and looped a strand of hair back behind her ear, kissing it as he did so.

There was a long silence. Finally, she said softly: "The only reason I'm seeing him at all, is because he's exactly what Towers said – a possible source of intelligence. And if I think, or if we find evidence, that he's lying to us, or involved in any way at all, with Crisis Crusade …" She swallowed. "I've done what had to be done once, Lucas, and whatever you, _or anyone else_, might think, I'll do it again." Her eyes, still slightly red-rimmed, locked on his. "With or without you."

"With," Lucas said promptly. He knew the time for questioning her decisions was over. "You're a novice at prisons." He stretched, deliberately causing the tattoos on his shoulders and chest to ripple visibly, and grinned. "Me, I'm an expert!"

Ros managed a brief smile that stretched into an exhausted yawn. "Thank you – I think. Idiot." As Lucas lay flat, she wriggled against him. Within minutes her breathing slowed and deepened as she slid into sleep. Lucas stared into the darkness and tried to clear his mind of the skin-crawling thought that tomorrow was going to find him behind prison walls again. It was a long time before the anxiety-control techniques the shrinks had taught him allowed him to follow her example.

oOoOoOo

Despite his best efforts, Lucas spent much of the night fighting off dreams that took his subconscious back to some of the darkest moments of his Russian incarceration. When he woke in a panic for the third time and almost hit a sleeping Ros on the back of the head with his flailing arms, he gave in and slipped cautiously out of the bed so as not to disturb her. He was drinking his second cup of tea when she joined him, dressed in a simple grey wool suit, the severity of which was relieved by an intricately pattern Indian shawl draped around her shoulders and secured by a gold clip. She gave an ironically approving nod when she saw his suit and tie, then started to brew coffee for herself.

"Anything from the Grid?" she asked. The words were clipped and terse. The mask that had slipped so badly the previous night was firmly back in place; Ros was in work mode.

Lucas shook his head. "Nor the prison." _That_, at least, was good news, and he could tell from the flicker of relief, so fleeting that someone who knew her less well wouldn't even have observed it, that Ros felt so too. At least Sir Jocelyn must be both alive and in a fit state to be interviewed.

She nodded acknowledgement and tilted her head in the direction of the sitting room where he had switched on the TV to catch the early broadcast. "News?"

He shrugged. "Bomb in Iraq, deadlock at the UN, accusations of kickbacks over Crossrail, celebrity shenanigans … oh, and there's rain sweeping in from the Atlantic."

Ros rolled her eyes. "I said _news,_ Lucas." She gulped her coffee and poured herself a refill. When he shook his head, she downed that too and said: "Right." She gave him a shrewd look. "I won't ask if you're ready for this. Sounded as if you've spent most of the night in prison, one way and another."

_Damn her._ Lucas had assumed she hadn't noticed. He met her gaze defiantly. "I'm fine." He saw the sardonic curve of her lips at his deliberate use of a phrase on which she more or less held the patent, and added pointedly: "You?"

Immediately, Ros's face took on the shuttered expression that he knew only too well. "Of course."

_Well, at least both of us are lying through our teeth. _Without further comment, Lucas followed her down into the street, wondering whether the finance department in Thames House would go into complete meltdown if they were to charge a taxi to expenses. He was unhappily certain that the knots of apprehension busily tying themselves in his guts were unlikely to be unravelled by another cross-town trip with Ros.

"Lucas? I need to think … get ready." He started as Ros opened the doors and then held up the keys. "We can't make any mistakes with this. I don't want anyone catching us unprepared. Do you mind?"

_Mind? _Lucas caught the keys she tossed to him with a relief that increased with every mile of the journey. The roads got busy quickly once they passed Hammersmith, and if it had been Ros trying to negotiate a way through the stop-start traffic, he was convinced he'd have needed to occupy the bed next to Sir Jocelyn's in the infirmary wing by the end of the trip. For the moment, she seemed too absorbed in checking the messages on her mobile phone to be irritated by the jams. Just as well, he thought, since if they didn't ease soon, they were going to be late. Sloppy punctuality was one of Ros's pet hates, as several junior officers whose ears she had pinned back for it could attest, and Lucas could guess who would be taking the flak if they weren't in Governor Phelps's office by nine-thirty sharp. He had no illusions about the emotions that were quietly seething behind Ros's controlled façade this morning – or how little it might take to cause them to erupt again.

He was thankful when the traffic at last began to thin out. Ros glanced up from her phone and exchanged a sardonic smile with him as they crossed Uxbridge Road and passed a signpost pointing to the nearby Shepherds Bush Market. The local police station was located about a quarter of a mile further on, and the Shepherd's Bush mosque, with which Section D had had more to do than they would have liked on several occasions over the last decade or so, two blocks further down. In one moment of particular exasperation, Harry had groused that only in London could you find so many prayers, police and prostitutes jostling for supremacy in so little space.

"We'll make it," Lucas said, as Ros muttered an almost silent curse at her watch. The traffic was flowing freely up Wood Lane now. "No problem." His words were interrupted by her phone. She groaned.

"Yup, Myers! Yes." She listened for a moment. "She _what_?" Her face turned white with fury. "I don't care whether she's negotiating for a bridging loan with the bloody IMF, Chen, if she's not at her desk within thirty minutes I'll have her seconded to public relations for a month!"

"Lizzie," she snarled when she hung up. "Sorry, she'll be late, she had to see her _debt counsellor_."

"Debt counsellor?" Lucas said in surprise. MI-5 kept a very close watch on the personal finances of its officers for the obvious reason; people in financial difficulty were considered a potential security risk. Until fairly recently, failing to inform the personnel department that you were running an overdraft could result in dismissal from the Service.

"They've had to get a bit more lenient since 2008, or we'd be shedding officers like dandruff." Ros grimaced. "But that's no bloody excuse, damn her. Wait till we get back." She glanced out of the window as Lucas slowed to pass the former BBC studios at White City. Knots of people were watching a large lorry making a dog's breakfast of reversing into the compound and blocking half the road. Ros clicked her tongue impatiently. "I thought they'd all moved over to their shiny new HQ in Portland Place by now?"

"They have." Lucas negotiated the obstacle and put his foot down again. "Sold that off, didn't they, to some consortium? Supposed to be building a hotel and flats in there, I read somewhere." He glanced back in the mirror. "Looks like the demolition squad's moving in – weird how people will stand around and watch that kind of thing." As they reached the corner of Du Cane Road, he flicked his left-hand indicator and said: "Eureka." He waved a gaggle of students across the road and raised his eyebrows. "Imperial College and the Scrubs cheek to jowl?"

"Yeah. Bloody students bring the tone of the neighbourhood right down." Ros's usual sardonic flippancy didn't quite come off, and Lucas felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her. Whatever she would like him to believe, she must be dreading this as much as he was. "Main entrance."

He turned in through the wrought iron gates and eased up to the security barrier beyond which loomed the massive square brick gatehouse to the prison. Ros slid down her window and showed her ID. When Lucas was fixed with a hostile look, he produced his as well, trying not to dwell on the fact that this was the first time he'd ever had trouble getting _into_ a prison. The officer took both cards to the duty Portakabin and got on the phone. Lucas looked across the courtyard and gave an involuntary shudder. Ros looked sharply at him.

"This isn't Lefortovo, Lucas."

"Yeah, I know." He summoned up a smile that he knew held no conviction. "They all look the bloody same, that's the trouble."

Ros tutted in mock horror. "Philistine. This is a Grade II listed building. Portland stone and slate roof in the chapel, I'll have you know. They even have a biodiversity action plan for the prison garden."

Knowing that she was trying to minimise the steadily rising tension in both of them, Lucas forced himself to respond in the same jocular tone. "_Bijou _residence, no less. Must be why there's such a waiting list for accommodation."

"Yeah. You know what it's like with sitting tenants." Ros accepted their ID and two visitors' badges back from the duty officer.

"Park over there on the left. Governor's aide will meet you by the staff entrance." His tone was sour; _'spook'_, as both of them knew, was a dirty word in the prison service.

"Thanks." When Lucas had parked and switched off the engine, they both clipped on their badges and got out of the car.

"Don't forget to lock it," Ros said, deadpan. "High crime rate around here."

Lucas rolled his eyes, did so, and threw her the keys, which Ros, uncharacteristically, dropped. He retrieved them and placed them in her hand with a mock-gallant flourish. Instantly, Ros closed it into a tight fist – just a fraction of a second too late to prevent him from seeing that her fingers were trembling.

"There." She folded her arms into invisibility under her shawl and nodded her head towards a young man in a suit emerging from the staff entrance, dwarfed by the massive, brooding solidity of the gatehouse. Lucas moistened his lips and kept pace with her as they went to meet him.

"Mark Stewart, Governor Phelps's aide." He smiled and shook hands with both of them. "May I just check your ID?" Again, both of them produced it. The aide scrutinised it carefully, and then re-opened the door through which he had emerged. "Thank you. I'm afraid we have to ask you to submit to a search; standard procedure for all visitors." He looked at them both. "OK?"

Lucas's mouth had turned dry with the memories that brought back. He swallowed.

"That's fine," Ros's voice said quietly. He felt her hand gently patting the small of his back. "Lead the way, Mr Stewart. Let's get this show on the road."

oOoOoOo

_Thank you for reading. Please review! :)_


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